Part of me still wondered if Lenny Smile really was dead. I remembered the man I had glimpsed in Brompton Cemetery. He had looked remarkably like the man I had seen in the photograph, and had certainly taken off fast enough when I spotted him. But if Lenny wasn’t dead, where was he? And who was it who had disappeared under the steamroller?

“I give up!” Tim exclaimed.

He seemed to be reading my mind. “This isn’t an easy case,” I agreed.

“No!” He pointed. “I’m talking about this crossword in the Dandy!”

I ignored him and flicked over the page in my newspaper. And that was when I saw it. It was on the same page as the horoscopes. An advertisement for a circus in Battersea Park.

Direct from Moscow

THE RUSSIAN STATE CIRCUS

Starring

The Flying Karamazov Brothers

Karl “On Your” Marx—The Human Cannonball

The Fabulous Tina Trotsky

Three Sisters on Unicycles

And much, much more!

There was a picture showing a big top, but it was what was in front that had caught my eye. It was a figure in silhouette. A man selling balloons.

“Look at this, Tim!” I exclaimed, sliding the newspaper toward him.

Tim quickly read the page. “That’s amazing!” he said. “I’m going to meet an old friend!”

“What are you talking about?”

“My horoscope. That’s what it says . . .”

“Not the horoscopes, Tim! Look at the advertisement underneath!”

Tim read it. “This is no time to be going to the circus, Nick,” he said. “We’re on a case!”

“But look at the balloon seller!” I took a deep breath. “Don’t you remember what Mrs. Lovely said? There was a witness when Lenny Smile was killed. It was a man selling balloons. I thought that was odd at the time. Why should there have been a balloon seller in Battersea Park in the middle of the night?”

“He could have been lost . . .”

“I don’t think so. I think he must have been part of the circus. There’s a picture of him here in the paper. Maybe the balloon seller was advertising the circus!”

“You mean . . . on his balloons?”

“Brilliant, Tim! Got it in one.”

Tim ripped the page of the newspaper in half. He must have accidentally caught hold of the tablecloth, because he ripped that in half, too. He folded the paper into his top pocket. “It’s your turn to do the dishes,” he said. “Then let’s go!”

*  *  *

In fact we didn’t go back to Battersea until that evening. According to the advertisement, there was only one performance of the circus that day—at seven-thirty—and I didn’t see any point in showing up before. If the balloon seller really was part of the big top, he’d probably be somewhere around during the performance. We would catch up with him then.