We were only just in time. As we pressed back against Madame Zelide’s downy feather capes, I heard the door of the dressing-room open. Through a little crack in the curtains, I could see the table with the book lying on its crumpled wrapping paper. Then the person who had come into the room walked into my range of vision.
I caught my breath. He was the man from the St. Anton; the man with the gray trench coat; the man who had shot at Iris; the gunman who bit his nails!
Just seeing him was a shock. But there was something else. He was hatless, and for the first time I saw his hair. It was red.
For an excruciatingly prolonged moment he stood there by the table, gnawing at his nail. Then he picked up the Beard’s book and opened it.
I saw his fingers turning the leaves rapidly. Then he gave a sharp little grunt. Furtively he slipped the book under his arm. Then, as quickly as he had come, he left.
Iris and I scrambled out of the closet together. Iris said hoarsely, “Peter, did you see his hair? The man who killed Lina and Eulalia had pure white hair, didn’t he? You told me. White hair—red hair. They are the roses. The two gunmen were the Roses all along. And the roses they threw were a sort of trade-mark.”
It had been as simple as that! “The protagonists bore the fragrant, fairy-tale names of White Rose and Red Rose.” The two trapeze artists who had murdered their partner, Tito Forelli, ten years ago, had been convicted on the evidence of the three women “all telling the same story.” The two Rosa Brothers now seemed to be taking a terrible revenge on the women whose evidence had convicted them—Eulalia, Lina, Zelide.
I remembered the Beard’s sinister remark: “The white rose and the red rose are out.” Not out in the garden. No. Out of prison!
Iris and I stared at each other. She said, “The Red Rose came here to steal the book because he didn’t want Zelide warned. That means Zelide is still alive. That means they’re still after her.”
Her reasoning was a little higgledy-piggledy, but she’d most likely got the right idea. Emmanuel Catt must have read of the release of the two Rosa Brothers. He must have realized the great danger for the three women which that release would precipitate and he had sent each of them a copy of his book, to warn them. His warning had failed miserably with Eulalia and Lina. And now the book for Zelide had been stolen.
Zelide might be here any minute. Heaven alone knew where the drunken Beard could be found. Iris and I were the only ones now who could warn her of the terrifying vendetta which had singled her out for its third victim. Zelide’s life was in our hands now.
VII
We hurried out of the dressing-room into the corridor with no conscious plan. From far away I could hear the brassy blare of the circus band.
The passage was empty. The Red Rose had betaken himself off as neatly as he had come.
We stood there a moment ineffectually. The band had thumped into Yankee Doodle. Somehow that rollicking music in the distance made the immediate silence far deeper.
Suddenly the silence and the loneliness were shattered. From around the far end of the corridor debouched a wild, riotous assembly. In that motley swarm of people I made out the fat woman, the tallest man in the world, a couple of flaxen-haired midgets, youths in green tumbler uniforms, a plump, important ringmaster and a bevy of young, blonde aerialists in feather capes.
They were all in a state of high jubilation. Some were brandishing wine bottles, others were humming snatches of the Mendelssohn Wedding March. A fringe of clowns pranced around the edges like excited poodles.
There were two people in the center of the group around whom the gala pandemonium was focused. One of them was a swarthy, Greek-looking man, broad and beaming. The other was a woman whose arm was looped through his—a blonde with a mauve toque perched on stiffly waved hair.
That muscular blonde, that patently just-married blonde on the arm of her happy groom, was to me the sheerest dream of delight. There was no mistaking that flashing, toothy smile which had grinned at me from so many photographs. Zelide at last!
The procession came closer and closer. The voice of the top-hatted ringmaster rose importantly: “Ah, Madame Zelide, you scare us. You are not at your hotel. You do not come for the performance. No one knows where you are. Something terrible has happened to Madame, we say. And now it is this—this happy event—a bride. Madame Zelide no longer.” He kissed his own plump forefinger. “From now on, Madame Annapopaulos.”
“Madame Annapopaulos!” chorused the crowd in happy unison.
“Ah,” said Madame Zelide Annapopaulos coyly, beaming at her groom, “but the circus she still come first. I say to Dmitri, my career she always comes first. I say to Dmitri, whatever happens, I must take the performance. So I come. I am here.”
“Madame Zelide is here for the performance,” chanted the blonde aerialists in well-trained reverence.
I had never seen so much innocent joy. And the irony of it surged over me. Last night Zelide had been saved by Cupid. While gunmen, out for her life’s blood, prowled the elegant lobbies of the St. Anton, she had been amorously, respectably, and securely lodged in the arms of Mr. Annapopaulos.
The procession had swarmed right up to us now and was already pouring past us through the door into Zelide’s dressing-room. The happy bride and groom were swept straight past us into the room out of sight.
“Twenty minutes, Madame,” said a voice inside the room. “In twenty minutes our ballet goes on. You must be quick. Quick.”
They had all vanished from sight into the room now, all except two clowns who stood in the doorway.
Iris said, “Come on, Peter. We’ve got to warn her before she goes on for her act.”
We both started forward toward the dressing-room door. The clowns were still there, standing with their motley, rainbow backs toward us.
Iris prodded at one and said, “Let us by, please. We’ve got to see Madame Zelide.”
Inside the room we could hear loud, raucous laughs and the clinking of glasses. Slowly the two clowns turned around—a blue clown and a white clown. They stood there, blocking the doorway, staring at us.
“Please let us in,” said Iris again. “We have to see Madame Zelide at once.”
The eyes of the white clown flickered unpleasantly. Suddenly he swung around and shut the door of the dressing-room, so that we were barricaded from the people inside. There were only the clowns, then, and us—no one else in that deserted corridor.
“Let us by—” began Iris.
And then she stopped, with a little piping gasp. Because, very slowly, the white clown lifted a cupped hand to his mouth and gnawed at his thumbnail. The hand stayed there for a split second, then it swooped down to the broad pocket of his costume. Long before we could do anything, he had whipped out a revolver. He was aiming it directly at Iris.
“One peep out of either of you,” he said, “and I’ll shoot the dame in the belly.”
With the gun still pointed straight at Iris, the Red Rose talked to the blue clown out of the corner of his mouth. “This is the guy and the dame I told you about—the dame I thought was Eulalia last night.”
The blue clown shifted sparse shoulders and stammered, “I—I th-thought s-so.”
Iris was very pale. Probably I was, too. I thought of Eulalia dead and Lina dead. I looked into those bright, fanatical eyes. The Rosa Brothers had been trapeze artists. Of course, it would have been simple for them to get themselves hired, incognito, at the circus.
I knew just how far to trust that revolver.
“Get moving,” said the Red Rose. He jerked his painted head. “Down the passage. Get moving.”
We had to, of course. I took Iris’s hand. We started down the empty passage in the direction the Red Rose indicated. The two clowns fell in behind. The Red Rose’s revolver was pressed against Iris’s back.
“Left, here,” said the Red Rose. “Down that passage to the left.”
We turned into it, Iris and I, hand in hand. It was a narrower passage with no doors in it, a lonely, gray passage.
“If we see anyone,” said the Red Rose, “and if you bat an eyelid, I shoot.” After a pause, explaining, he added. “I don’t know what you know or what your game is. But we got important work to do. We ain’t having you or no one else butting in, see?”
We came to the end of the corridor. There was a door, a tall, steel door. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a key. White Rose took the key. He opened the door outward. Inside there were stairs going down into blackness.
“Turn around,” said the Red Rose.
We turned around. We stared straight into his clown’s face, straight at the revolver.
“Back down those stairs,” he said.
We moved slowly backward, down, down into darkness. The Red Rose loomed above. Was he going to shoot now?
The revolver shifted slightly in his hand. He said, “You’re lucky you’re still alive. Just keep thinking about that.”
Then suddenly we didn’t see him any more. There was nothing but utter darkness and the vague, musty smells of a cellar. The door above us had been slammed shut.
I heard the rattle of a key in the lock. Then there was no noise but our own quick breathing. I was relieved because as the Red Rose had said, we were alive.
We stood there, precariously, halfway down the dark stairs that led to—what?
Iris said huskily, “We must find the lights.”
Lights—in that darkness!
She started up the stairs again, gropingly. I felt in my pocket for matches. I brought out a box and made a little flickering light.
“The switch must be by the door.”
We reached the steel, impregnable door. There was a switch right by it. Before the match sputtered out, I twisted the switch.
Nothing happened.
I flicked it around and around. No light came. It was broken.
Iris said, “We must go down into the cellar. Maybe there’s another way out.”
We started down the stairs, lighting match after match, penuriously, because there were not very many. We were down in the bowels of the cellar, tripping over old gym horses, slats, broken poles, all the odd, useless junk that ends up in a sports stadium cellar.
Then suddenly, after a match had burnt out, Iris gave a little cry, stumbled, and clutched me. “Peter, light a match. Quick. I think there are steps here.”
I lit the last match but one. As its cone of flame sprouted, I saw that Iris was right. We were in a corner by the wall, and concrete stairs led up. We scrambled up them. The match went out. Falteringly I lit the last match. I held it above us. The steps seemed to lead straight to the ceiling.
“They must lead somewhere.”
Iris was scrambling ahead. She reached the top. “Keep the match alight,” she said; and, instantaneously, the match flickered out. There were queer, shuffling sounds in the darkness. Then Iris said, “The ceiling’s wood. I think it’s loose.”
She gave a cry of jubilation. Because suddenly there was light, a square of light. And I saw Iris against it in silhouette. Iris, glamorous, chic, elegant, and disheveled, standing at the top of the steps, her hands above her head supporting a square trap door. There was straw everywhere.
* * *
—
She wriggled herself up. I went after her, squeezing through.
Straw was all around us on the floor. Vaguely I began to realize we were in a stall, an animal stall. With a tingle of excitement I recognized it. It was empty now. But we had been here before. This was where Edwina and her train had been.
“Quick,” I said, gripping Iris’s arm. “We’ve got to get to Zelide’s dressing-room. What’s the time?”
Iris glanced at her little wrist watch. “Two forty-five. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe she’s already in the arena.”
Together, we ran out of the open stall, through the great archway and headlong into the entrance to the arena itself. The music was playing, loudly, throbbingly. People were everywhere, stagehands, hangers-on, whatever they were, all crowded around the entrance to the ring.
We pushed into the crowd. Iris was ahead. Then she swung round, clutching my hand. “Look, Peter.”
In front of us, almost near enough to touch and yet infinitely unget-at-able, I saw a serried row of hippy, feathered blondes marching smartly away over the red, white, and blue sawdust toward the distant center of the ring. Marching grandiosely at their head was a single, even more majestically feathered blonde.
Madame Zelide herself!
We were at the very brink of the ring. We started running forward.
Iris called, “Madame Zelide!”
Then she stopped, because someone had gripped her from behind. I was gripped, too.
A voice said, “Are you nuts? You can’t go on there. The performance is on.”
We swung around desperately and stared at a lot of nondescript men.
“We’ve got to get to Zelide,” I said. “It’s a matter of life or death.”
One of the men spat. Another man, an old, gnarled man with spectacles, had a newspaper. He was staring at us through the spectacles with a queer, intent sort of stare. He looked down at the front page. “Murder of Eulalia Crawford,” he read. “Wanted by the police, a man and a woman answering…”
The other men were crowding around excitedly, looking at the paper, too. We stood there, circled by them. For a moment I felt like a trapped animal.
Really before either of us knew it, Iris and I were pushing through the circle, scrambling away and running—running like mad.
“The audience,” Iris panted. “We’ve got our tickets, Peter. That’s the best place to lose ourselves—in the audience.”
Vaguely I was conscious of confusion, shouts behind us, but we rushed on through the deserted sideshows, past the bored cage animals, upstairs to the actual entrance to the auditorium. I had the tickets ready in my hand. We swung through doors and automatically became anonymous, just two molecules in a vast body of people.
VIII
Our seats were ringside seats, I knew—a box. No attendants were around at the moment. Iris and I started down through the tiers toward the front of the great oval house.
In the arena, the feathered, bespangled blondes were splaying out to the rhythm of the band, each of them moving to her own individual hanging trapeze. I could see the stately figure of Madame Zelide herself, bowing in the center of the ring. Very magnificent she looked.
We were down at the front row now. Ahead of us I could see two empty boxes. I didn’t know whether one was ours or not. I didn’t care. I navigated Iris ahead into one. I followed.
The sound of footsteps and voices came from behind us. Guiltily we spun around. Iris gave a little gasp. I stared, like a fool.
Coming down the steps between the packed rows of seats were a man and four impeccably Social Register dowagers. And the man, infinitely respectable in discreet, ambassadorial serge, wore a beard—a black beard, a magnificent, godlike beard. His eyes, perhaps, were ever so slightly rheumy and morning-afterish, but he proceeded down the steps with all the sober dignity in the world.
Emmanuel Catt, America’s Most Distinguished Criminologist, had come to the circus. For one paralyzed second, Iris and I stared at him. Then, as one, we pounced.
Iris said, “You! At last we’ve found you.”
The Beard drew himself up. He fixed us both with a cold eye and said, “I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you, and there is straw in your hair. Please let me pass.”
So he didn’t know us! So the Beard, sober among his dowagers, was a respectable Dr. Jekyll who disowned the evil, alcoholic, midnight acquaintances of his d
runken Mr. Hyde other self.
“But you must remember us.” Iris stared at him. “How could you forget—after last night? Pussy!”
The dowagers gave one glacial, co-operative sniff and swept into the next box. A faint flush tinged the Beard’s cheeks. “Ah—last night, I—ah—was not myself.”
“But the Rosa Brothers,” said Iris wildly. “They’ve murdered Eulalia and Lina! It was in all the papers! And now it’s Zelide!”
“I haven’t seen a paper,” the Beard said mechanically. Then he realized what Iris had said. “Murdered Eulalia and Lina?” he gasped.
“Yes, yes. And now they’re here at the circus disguised as clowns. They’re after Zelide. She’s right here—out in the ring.”
The Beard was utterly shaken. “But she must be mad. I warned her.”
Suddenly there came the ominous rolling of drum taps. As one, Iris and I and the astounded Beard swung around to face the ring.
The moment for the great Bird Ballet had come. Like clockwork, with the first roll on the drums, the blonde “birds” lifted their arms and gripped their trapezes. Rather ponderously, they began to swing onto the trapezes and then levitate as the ropes carried them upward. The drums rolled on.
And Zelide still stood there in the center of the ring. A huge trapeze was lowering above her head. The blonde “birds,” in mass ascension, soared higher and higher. Vaguely I saw men up there, men in fancy costumes, hanging high up on the ropes, maneuvering them. Zelide gave a final bow.
The trapeze, lowered from above, came closer and closer. She lifted a hand for it.
And then, as the thunderous drum-roll reached its climax, something incalculably unexpected happened. Suddenly, as if materializing from nowhere, there were roses—a shower of roses tumbling down, down, splashing to the sawdust and around Zelide’s feet.
Red roses…and white roses…red roses…and white roses…
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 124