Tommy, as Schmidt, was not paying much heed to what they were saying. All he saw was Jerry Gordon advancing with the full intention of making hamburger out of him, and there on the steps his own true self, wholly unmenaced by a whip, gun and brawn.
It was so automatic that he hardly had to think to do it. Just zip! and it was over. Tommy was standing on the steps, once more thirty inches tall, looking with keen relief upon an astounded Schmidt being advanced upon by Jerry Gordon. Let Schmidt get out of his own messes as best he could! Let him be expelled from the camp! To the devil with being a ringmaster, anyhow!
Gordon raised his whip and brought it sizzling down. It seemed inevitable that it would take the ringmaster’s head from his shoulders. But no! Up came the crop to fend, and out shot a cannonball fist to knock Gordon almost out of the white wagon.
Gordon, staggering, again prepared to leap into the fray. But Schmidt roared, “Stand where you are, you fool! You’ve made enough mistakes for one day!”
“When I’ve done with you,” cried Gordon, “we’ll see who was right!”
“Right!” bellowed Schmidt in icy rage. “Tell me what you think is wrong!”
“You know already,” snapped Gordon.
“If I did, would I ask you?”
“You devil!” cried Gordon. “You steal my wife and then you’ve got the gall to throw it in my teeth!”
He started to attack once more. And once more Schmidt’s brute force stopped him, held him in a vise.
“Your wife? Why, you idiot, what would I have to do with your wife? If a performer cannot transact business with me in my office without a foolish has-been trailing around for ‘vengeance,’ then the business has changed—changed more than I want to see it. Bah, you simpleton! She knows that you are failing. She knows that I contemplated throwing out your act in midseason, contract or no contract. And she came to plead for you. She came to beg me not to break your heart. And because she humbles herself for the likes of you, you are willing to debase her character before all these people, to accuse her of vileness which never could have occurred in her lovely head! And you call yourself a man, Gordon? You have the nerve to stand before us after that, Gordon? Apologize to Betty, or I’ll have your heart!”
Bewildered, Gordon turned to his wife, but he could read nothing from her tear-stained face but shame, and that he read wrong.
“Forgive me . . . Betty,” he said.
“There’s a show going on,” said Schmidt, “in case you have failed to notice it. For the moment, Gordon, we’ll retain you despite your cesspool suspicions. And because, Mrs. Johnson, you could not run this show at all were it not for me, I’ll accept your apologies and condescend to stay on, at least until you can find another ringmaster and manager. Now clear out while I straighten myself up. Bah, what fools you are!”
Betty and Gordon sought to leave. Mrs. Johnson, feeling very much ashamed of herself, wrung her hands. “Hermann—”
“Yes!” gruffly.
“Hermann . . . can you forgive me?”
“We’ll talk of that later. Clear out and let me change!”
But the group on the steps stood firm. The two stakers were too single-track of mind not to remember that they held a captive. Mrs. Johnson backed into them, and almost stepped on Tommy.
“What we gonna do with this guy?” begged a staker. “He’s got his mitts full of dough, and we caught him comin’ outa the back windows.”
Schmidt pushed them back from Tommy and stood there on a higher step, looking amusedly down at the midget. But the amusement in his eyes was of an awful kind, and Tommy shuddered.
Schmidt yanked the filing cases out of Tommy’s hands. “The day’s take,” said Schmidt, looking meaningly at Mrs. Johnson. “That back window is always open. It would not admit a grown man, but it would certainly let in a midget. I think we have here,” he said with satisfaction, “the reason why we have been losing money with such regularity.”
“Wh-What?” gasped Tommy. “Why . . . you know you—”
“Go ahead,” said Schmidt. “Lie out of it if you can!” He looked again at Mrs. Johnson as though to say, “Wait till you hear this!”
But all Tommy said was “Ulp.”
“Tommy,” said Mrs. Johnson. “I can’t . . . can’t believe that you—”
“There’s the evidence,” said Schmidt. “Listen, you two,” he ordered the stakers, “take this fellow into the pad room and hold him until after the show. We’ll get John Law to look out for him, after that.”
Tommy swallowed hard and felt tears of rage welling up. But what could he do? He was the only one who had any true knowledge of Schmidt’s defections.
But wait! Schmidt had averted disaster only for the moment; what a trick to change around again!
Tommy bent a calculating eye upon the ringmaster up there in the entrance of the white wagon. The second Schmidt spoke to him again, Schmidt was done!
At the moment, however, Schmidt had other objects of interest and, horror of horrors, it was another who spoke to Tommy.
“I’m sorry about this, kid. I didn’t think—”
It happened so fast that Tommy could not prevent it. There was a swish and a shudder, and then Tommy was standing, whip in hand, looking at a helpless midget held fast between two brawny stakers!
This time, however, the transfer did not work with smoothness on the other’s part. For Gordon appeared to be out on his feet, midget as he now was. He couldn’t even focus his eyes, much less cry out.
And though Tommy did wait for that protest to be made so as to take full advantage of it and swap back, it struck him suddenly that he was far better off as Jerry Gordon than as either Schmidt or Little Tom Little.
So let it be.
“Mind what I say!” cried Mrs. Johnson. “Hold him fast. You’ll pay, and pay plenty, if he gets away from you!”
“Count on us,” said a staker, giving the midget a ferocious shake. “C’mon, Pete.”
And between them, the two stakers hauled away Little Tom Little, now Gordon.
Having gotten out of the scrape so neatly, Tommy himself, now bronzed and strong, tall and handsome, felt quite elated about the matter. Plainly he now had his chance. He had the goods on Schmidt. He had merely to turn the tables and wrest the proof, and all was well once more.
He was on the verge of striking a pose and accusing Schmidt of all the crimes he knew the ringmaster guilty of when yet another thing happened.
A long, stirring chord, A major, betokened the introduction of an act in the big top. And Betty snatched at Gordon—Tommy—and cried, “There’s your cue!”
And Schmidt echoed it more loudly. “You’re holding up the show! They’re letting your cats into the arena this instant! Hurry, man, do you want to ruin everything?”
Tommy was engulfed in a terrible thought. Cats—big cats, tawny cats, lions and tigers with gaping fangs and saber claws—waiting for him! Waiting to claw and rip, to rend his flesh and destroy him, the way that lion had almost done in St. Louis!
So paralyzed was he that he could not cry out. And neither could he resist Mrs. Johnson and Schmidt, who hurried him swiftly along toward the marquee.
Inside, they were repeating the chord as a conclusion to the announcement, and then once more it wailed forth, anxiously calling for the absent wild animal trainer.
Tommy stopped dragging back. Like a martyr who can already smell the smoke of his fellow victims, he thought it best to put a face upon it and hope that it would not be too slow or painful.
For he might think of standing up to a big person, he might take a chance or two in his act, but never, never could he envision himself facing one big cat, much less forty. Through his mind ran that scene in St. Louis. He could smell again the fetid breath of the brute, could feel o
nce more the rake of butcher-knife claws. If help had come an instant later than it had, it would have been all over.
Looking down at himself as they rushed him along, he could not credit himself with his present body’s capabilities. Gordon was strong and handsome and sure. But he was strong and handsome and sure in his soul—and there was the difference.
How he had failed! Tommy thought. Bodies did not seem to make any difference at all. It was the soul of the man that counted. What he was deep inside him, what courage and daring he might possess. And if he were the biggest man in the world and possessed no strength of soul, he would still be a fumbling fool.
He had prayed for a chance to prove that it was the body which counted. He had dreamed of being able to prove that, size for size, he could match up with the best of the big world. And now his craven heart, even as he cursed it, told him that he had lied. He was a big person now. No stronger body existed in all this sawdust land than Gordon’s. But without the heart and soul of a lion trainer, the body was so much clay, dependent on the Command within it. The man was his soul, not his body.
And Tommy hated himself, realizing that he had not the courage to face those beasts!
In his favor there was the fact that, expert showman though he might be, he had never had any experience whatever with animal training. So deeply had he hated the thought of facing the big cats that he had never even been able to watch Gordon work. And so he couldn’t go in and fake a routine, even if he had the nerve. He didn’t know one end of that arena from the other. He was Little Tom Little, midget ace, no matter how much the world mistook him for Jerry Gordon, Emperor of the Kings of Beastiana.
With a gasp, he held up again. Somehow he knew that Maizie, standing by the first tier of seats, had been on the outskirts of the last half-hour’s events. She had seen and heard all that had passed with Schmidt, for how, otherwise, could poor Maizie know so definitely that she looked at Little Tommy Little now, and not Jerry Gordon?
That she did know was written plainly upon her stricken face. No larger than a child’s big doll, prettier even in her grief than many a movie star, she had come to help him. Her intuition had identified him, and now—
Suddenly his heart gave a lurch. Why had she placed herself there? Why, if not to offer him his last chance at life?
And she cried out to him as he passed, “Look at me! Save yourself!”
And she would have reached for him if Schmidt had not hurled her back. Little Tom Little tried to wrench away and strike Schmidt at that. And in doing so, he discovered another truth.
Schmidt understood. He had understood all along! He knew definitely that this was not really Jerry Gordon—knew that a mere midget would curl up and die in that arena under the trampling of clawed feet. Knew that Jerry Gordon would also die in the body . . .
The knowledge was an ice-water bath. Why did he let them carry him on this way? Why didn’t he fight?
But Schmidt’s grip on his arm was painful. And then—then there were five thousand people under the canvas, watching with bated breath while the trumpets screamed, rolled to announce the approach of Jerry Gordon, Master of Death.
Now a spotlight had them in its grip. He was blinded by it for an instant, and then ahead of him loomed the thin vertical lines which made up the beast arena. He stood all alone, while Mrs. Johnson and Schmidt drew away. While Schmidt leaped up before the band and snatched the speaker mike and bawled:
“Ladees and gennulmun! Pree-senting the one and only mastah of wild beasts in all the cir-cus wurrrld—who dares step into the areena with ta-wenty li-uns and ta-wenty man-eating and ferocious Bengal tigahs, which, though deadly enemies of each othah, though deadly enemies of man, will be fought to complete obedience by one human being, one man who, alone and without help, will step fearlessly into that arena and conquer with a whip and a gun of blanks the absolutely untamable, carnivorous, ravenous, dia-bol-ical, vol-canic, tempestuous, murderous terrors of the jungle. Ladees and gennulmun, I give you the most fearless man who ever trod our earth’s fair face, Jerry Gordon, Emperor of the Jungle Monarchs, Master of the Wurrld’s most dangerous animals!”
The drums rolled and the trumpets blared.
The spot flashed and crackled and was hot upon him.
Tommy was too much of a showman to run. He was hypnotized by his position. And there was something else. So much was it a habit of this body to step forward and enter that arena, that his traitorous legs were carrying him straight to the side door.
Behind him in the sudden hush he heard just one thin cry.
“Tommy!”
He would not look back. It would be dangerous. . . .
Out of the run and into the arena spilled the giant cats. Flashing tawny bodies, four and five hundred pounds each brute, every ounce a demander of blood! Stripes and snarls and gleaming teeth all milled just behind these thin grates, racing round and round, swiping at each other, snarling and spitting and roaring death to each other and the menagerie men and the world of people.
Five thousand spectators, with chilled spines, looked upon the scene. Five thousand spectators saw—or thought they saw—Jerry Gordon step into the double doors, shut himself in the separate cage, then poise and steel himself for entrance into the arena itself.
It was death, but he had to go through with it. It was death, but, with these people and the spotlight, he could not go back.
Perhaps he owed that to Gordon. Perhaps this was a last desperate effort to prove himself right, to prove that being a big person in size was quite enough, and that the soul mattered not at all. Perhaps this was his jeer to his own puny courage. He had been terrified of all things—that was why he had wanted to stop being a midget. And though that fear had grown wholly from his minuteness, from the danger of being stepped upon, and the careless way the big world had pushed him around, it was cowardice just the same. Cowardice—and it had driven him to this. And was it not justice, now, that he should face a crucial test?
Maybe—though the hope was faint—maybe he could get away with this. His body had carried him to the right door. It might carry him through the right motions. And these cats were used to Gordon, and now—now wasn’t he Gordon?
He had asked for this. He would take it.
The steel bars were cold upon his palm, and he pulled open the second door.
Before him the milling beasts leaped away. A lion sprang to his pedestal, a tiger to his. And then, like an avalanche in reverse, the instant he mechanically cracked his whip and fired his gun, all but one soared upward to their perches. The one backed and clawed at the lash, and spat at the flame and powder smoke. He was a heavy, furious lion, whose mane bristled out to frame his rageful face.
The air was oppressive with the animal smell. The stands were a heaving blur somewhere out beyond the lights. Five thousand faces were less than one.
He, Little Tom Little, was all alone in a wild beast arena, and despite this body which he had usurped, he was still a midget. For, though his hand and arm mechanically cracked that whip and fired the gun, he had forgotten, in his horror, that he was “Jerry Gordon.” He might see the size of his arm, he might feel the largeness of his body, but he could not believe these mere manifestations of sense. He was himself, his soul, and that was the soul of Little Tom Little, midget and coward!
With whip and flame, Tommy fought the lion. Sawdust churned beneath his boots. And when the brute reared up and pawed the air, the chair came naturally to his hand. Despite himself, he found that he advanced. To his amazement, the lion pedestaled himself. Tommy could not believe that he had won in this—that the act would run on its usual routine.
But there was a big tiger angrily leaping down to prepare for its hoop act, to be followed by the others in rotation. The tiger went through the hoop, and the whole brutish mass glistened and rippled as beast after beast leaped t
hrough the ring.
Little Tom Little began to take heart. For all their snarling and fighting, these animals had been beautifully trained. And they were held in check by the sight and smell of Jerry Gordon, even though Jerry Gordon was not there. . . .
The roll-over tiger came next. So often had that arm given the cue that now it came without Tommy understanding it. Over went the tiger once, but not twice. Here she knew there was a break, a break in which she roared her defiance and advanced, prepared to leap. Gordon, at this point, would advance upon her, chair held against his breast, bending low and glaring hypnotically into her eyes to force her back, to outstare and outface her and, by sheer will, make her lie down and roll once more. And the other beasts knew that they must roar and swap pedestals and glare at their trainer, to make a fighting act.
Up came the chair to Tommy’s chest. Forward came the tiger, spitting curses, raking out with lustful claws.
And the routine would have held together, for now Tommy was perceiving that this was routine with them all, done so often that neither beasts nor man had to think what came next. They were automatons in a cage, and if he let his body follow through, he would be all right.
But Tommy himself did not know that the roll-over tiger’s ferocity was supposed to reach such a hideous pass. For a moment, once more he was fully Little Tom Little. He knew how far behind him he could go—but in his anxiety, he estimated the distance for Little Tom Little, not six-foot-three Jerry Gordon—and took three steps, when he should have taken one.
Just at the point where he was sure he could get through, when he had lost respect for these brutes and the act, his heel caught in an abandoned hoop!
Backwards he went, falling heavily, for it was further down than he had thought. He strove to brace himself up the instant he struck. He wanted to slash with the whip and fire the gun, and then take an instant’s rest in the entranceway.
But this act was no fake, nor was it wholly routine. For these were jungle cats, from Malaysia and Africa, and to see their trainer down—
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 39