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then?” I asked. “How are you going to look for evidence? How, as a matter of curiosity, do you know what to look
for?”
    â€œWell,” said Beef, “I’m glad you asked me that, because I’ve got it all worked out nice. I thought to myself, the way to stop a murder what might happen anytime is to find out first who might want to murder who, and second, how he or she might do it. Now, it stands to reason that if this here murder was premeditated—and we can assume it will be—then the person responsible will want it to look like an accident. Especially since they’ll know that I’m on the scene. All right then. This is what we do. We go to the performance this evening and keep our eyes open. We look around and make a note of all the ways someone might be killed and everybody think it was an accident. You heard what Mr. Jackson said? He said there was danger in everything that was done in the ring. So we’ve got to find just where the danger lies. And everything’s straightforward.” He looked at me in triumph.
    â€œThere was a boy at school with me,” I said thoughtfully, “who had an original way of birds-nesting.”
    â€œHere,” said Beef, “what’s that got to do with this case?”
    â€œYou’ll see,” I answered. “The method this boy used was to go round all the hedges in his neighborhood and look for the places where he thought birds might possibly nest when the spring came. Then he cut away the brambles and nettles and put nails in the trees, so that when the birds did nest there he would be able to reach their eggs without any trouble.”
    â€œWell,” demanded Beef, “what happened?”
    â€œNothing,” I answered, “the birds never nested in the places he’d chosen for them. And that is where your method strikes me as being useless. The birds—if they nest at all—won’t nest in your pet trees.”
    â€œSo you don’t think it will work?” asked Beef.
    â€œMost decidedly not.”
    â€œThen what do you suggest?”
    â€œGoing straight home,” I said shortly. “At least that’s what I’m going to do, and I think you’d better come with me. Now look here, Beef, be honest with yourself. Do you really think there’s going to be anything of a case in this place? Or do you just like the circus atmosphere and are using it as an excuse for a holiday away from your wife?”
    â€œYou would put it like that,” snorted Beef, “and I can tell you straight that’s got nothing to do with it. You go on home if you want to. I’m going to stay here and get to the bottom of it. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you go home now you’ll be missing what looks like the most interesting case of my career. But that’s your affair.” And beyond that he refused to say another word.
    It was, I thought to myself, as I wandered out on to the ground, not a very easy question to decide. I quite honestly felt that our staying on now was little more than a gamble, and I hardly felt like wasting so much time and money on so small a chance. I decided in the end to put the question out of my mind until after the afternoon show. Time enough to make decisions then.
    Most of the artists were in their wagons, changing, and there was peculiar quietness about the camp. A small crowd had gathered by the gate, but it was impossible to tell whether they were simply curious, or whether they intended coming to the show and did not like to be first. The band, tuning, practicing, or simply running up and down the scale on their instruments, could be heard quite clearly, and then, after a brief silence, they struck up together with a Souza march. This seemed to be the signal, for people began to enter the ground and line up in front of the empty pay-box. In onesand twos at first, and then in a steady stream, until soon the queue reached to the gate and