The audience buzzed its approval. A pretty gesture, the final touch of showmanship. But, to us, the appalling, sinister implication of those roses was almost more than we could endure.
And, as we stood there, taut as steel, helpless, Zelide reached for the trapeze. She was easing herself up onto the bar.
It was then that Iris screamed, “Look! ’Way up there in the ropes!”
She stared up. I stared up. The Beard stared up. And we saw them—saw them up there almost at the peak of the giant arched roof. Two clowns, swinging expertly on ropes, close to the cables that supported Madame Zelide’s trapeze. Two clowns—a blue clown and a white clown. Clowns who, to the vast audience, were just another prop in the pageant; just part of the act.
The Red Rose and the White Rose.
And, as we stared up, I caught the sudden flash of something in the shaft of light from a baby spot. Something in the hand of the Red Rose—something gleaming and steely.
A knife!
Of course! That was the crazy plan—to cut halfway through one of Madame Zelide’s trapeze ropes, to wait until she started to swing, and let her hurtle herself to her doom.
“Look!” I clutched at the Beard’s arm. “The two clowns up there—they’re the Roses.”
“They dropped the roses,” said Iris.
“And the Red Rose has a knife. I saw it gleaming. He was cutting through one of the trapeze ropes. Don’t you see? When Zelide gets high enough, when she starts to swing…”
For one teetering second the three of us—Iris, the Beard, and I—stood petrified in the box.
Then the two clowns started swarming down their ropes. All the other men were swarming down, too, past the ascending blonde aerialists. No one else but us would have singled out the Roses. No one but Iris and I, who were supposed to be safely locked in the cellar, could possibly have guessed what they had done—guessed that, right there in front of an audience of thousands, they have prepared their fantastically brazen and cunning plot to murder Zelide.
The Roses were halfway to earth. Madame Zelide was rocking on the trapeze, ready to make her triumphant aerial ascent.
Overcome with a common, desperate urgency, the Beard and Iris and I started scrambling over the front of the box and dropped down into the ring. Somewhere behind us the Beard’s dowagers screamed. It was a fuse setting off a splutter of shouts and calls behind us. But, indifferent to them, we started running over the bright red, white, and blue sawdust toward Madame Zelide and the trapeze.
The drum-roll went on. Slowly, portentously, Madame Zelide and her trapeze started to rise upward, slowly upward. Attendants were running after us now, agitated, angry, with thumping footsteps and hoarse, high voices.
The Beard was ahead, his role of respectable escort to dowagers abandoned. A bearded Jupiter running with the fleetness of Mercury. We stumbled on through the sawdust. The Roses on their ropes were slipping nearer and nearer to earth. They were of vital importance. But first there was Zelide. Zelide had to be stopped in her regal ascent.
We reached the trapeze. The Beard was still ahead. It was a mad, March-hare moment. Zelide was dangling above our heads, getting higher and higher. I saw her tightsheathed legs swinging. I saw the Beard running ahead of me, immensely dignified and portentous.
Suddenly the legs and the Beard made contact. I saw Emmanuel Catt, America’s Most Distinguished Criminologist, leap with extraordinary dexterity into the air. I saw his large hands fold over Zelide’s ankles and tug her from the ascending trapeze.
Then, in a wild, farcical heap, the bearded dignitary and the world-famous, would-be-loved aerialist were tumbling together on the sawdust in an inextricable confusion of blonde hair, black beard, and roses—red and white roses.
The ringmaster was shouting and swishing with his whip. The attendants were closing in all around us. The whole vast auditorium was in an uproar.
The whole picture had become a kind of idiot’s blur to me. Only one thing was vivid—the realization that the blue clown and the white clown had clambered down their ropes to earth. The two of them stood there for a second, staring at our swirling little group. Then they started running, swiftly for the far exit from the arena.
Vaguely I heard Madame Zelide’s voice, high, shrill with furious indignation. Vaguely I heard the Beard’s voice, answering gravely. But this was no time for explanations. I rushed to the Beard. I grabbed his arm.
“The White Rose and the Red Rose are escaping,” I pointed. “There! We’ve got to get them.”
I had a brief glimpse of Zelide’s face, saw it grow pale with horror beneath the sawdust-sprinkled blonde hair. “The White Rose and the Red Rose!” she gasped. “They’re here?”
That was all, because the Beard and Iris and I were on the run again. The three of us, buoyed up by the wild exhilaration of the chase, started dashing across the huge arena after the fast-vanishing figures of the two clowns.
“Hurry, darling!” Iris cried.
It was surely the maddest race in history. Behind us, stumbling, shouting, panting, came tumblers, attendants, aerialists, everyone and anyone who happened to be around. At first, I think, they were chasing us. Then with a majestic spurt of speed, Madame Zelide, herself, caught up with us. Her tights were twisted, her blonde hair was wild, but she was splendid and formidable, and she was shouting, “Get them! Murderers!”
The gigantic audience had gone crazy. I didn’t blame them. They had come to see a circus. Now they had a lunatic track-race on their hands. The roar of them surged over us like a titanic wave.
“The Roses,” panted Zelide. “So they try to kill me like they kill poor Forelli. They—”
“I warned you,” put in Emmanuel Catt, lumbering at her side. “I sent you a copy of my book with a note. I marked page eighty-four. I never dreamed that you would not read it.”
“Nothing I get, no book, no note.”
“The Red Rose stole it,” put in Iris.
“I should have guessed they were here,” panted Zelide, her blonde hair streaming. “Just as I go on, Edwina, she break the line in her act. She charge at two clowns. I should have guessed.”
Ahead, we could see the White Rose and the Red Rose. They had almost reached the exit. People were lounging around it, staring blankly. We shouted out to them to stop the clowns. But they didn’t get the idea at all. The two Roses slipped into the little group of watchers—and disappeared.
“After them!” I shouted.
IX
We padded on at the head of our motley band. We reached the exit to the accompaniment of a final roar from the circus audience. We plunged into the little tangled group that was clustered there.
I saw a large, swarthy, prosperous man in a cutaway with a pink carnation. Zelide’s husband, Mr. Annapopaulos himself!
He pushed to his wife’s side. “Zelide, what have we? What then goes on?”
“The Roses,” stammered Zelide. “They are out of prison. They try to take their revenge, to murder me.”
Everyone seethed some more.
“The clowns!” I exclaimed. “The two clowns who just ran in here. They’re the murderers!”
I stopped because another voice broke in harshly: “That’s the guy. That guy and that lady—them’s the ones wanted in the papers for the Crawford murder.”
I spun round, to see the gnarled old man with the spectacles, who had almost captured Iris and me before we got to Zelide. He was pointing at us. And suddenly, from nowhere, three policemen appeared.
I never thought I’d be glad to see policemen. We rushed to them and we all started talking at once. Emmanuel Catt won. The beard gave him added weight in official eyes. Maybe they even knew him by reputation. “…tried to cut through Madame Zelide’s trapeze rope and kill her…attempted murder…two other murders…desperate criminals…disguised as clowns�
��just went through here…”
Everyone started chattering then. The gnarled old murderer-catcher, in particular. He pointed down a corridor and shouted, “They went that way. Two clowns.”
They started running then, the three of them, down the corridor which the old man had indicated. The Beard and Iris and Madame Zelide and Mr. Annapopaulos and I followed, with the others scrambling after us.
“At least one of them has a revolver,” shouted Iris. “They’re dangerous.”
We sped on, tumbling down one corridor, then another. There was always someone who had seen them, someone pointing ahead and shouting, “That way! That way!”
We passed Zelide’s dressing-room—and on. Suddenly, as the corridor wound to the left, I realized what was happening. Obviously the Roses had not planned this escape beforehand. If their cunning project had worked, they would merely have slipped down their ropes, mixed with the throng of other clowns, and actually watched the murder “accident” take place.
Iris and I, by our escape from the cellar, had thrown a monkey wrench into their schedule.
From now on they would have to improvise. But, circus performers from ’way back, they certainly knew all the ropes at the stadium, and they had the key to the cellar into which they had locked us. Almost definitely they would try to escape that way. Down into the cellar, locking the steel door behind them, under the ring, and then up into the animal stalls, far away from the hue and cry.
I pushed through the crowd until I could grab one of the policemen. “Let the others go on,” I said. “You come with me. I think I know how we can head them off.”
The policeman looked blank but came. In a second we were hurrying back against the crowd, shoving our way forcibly. Iris noticed us first, then Zelide and Mr. Annapopaulos, then the Beard. They too started pushing their way after us.
I caught Iris’s eye and nodded.
Soon the crowd, hot on the chase, had swirled on toward the cellar door, abandoning us.
“Quick,” I exclaimed. “Get to the animal stalls.”
They obeyed me—just because they were too dazed to do anything else. We ran on, down corridor after corridor until we reached the side entrance to the arena. We passed it, hurried under the tall archway, and then, suddenly, we were in the animal stalls. No one was there. No one at all.
Right in front of us, ranged along the walls on either side, were the elephant stalls. And the elephants themselves, their act over, lumbered around in them.
I said, “There’s a trap door from the cellar. It comes up in one of the elephant stalls. I’m almost sure they’ll be sneaking up that way.”
“Which stall?” said the policeman sharply.
I didn’t know. I looked at Iris. She was uncertain, too.
“I—I think it was over there.” She pointed to a stall to the right.
We hurried toward it, a taut, keyed-up group—the Beard and the policeman, Mr. Annapopaulos with his prosperous arm around his bride’s waist, Iris in the Dietrich veil, and me in what was left of my Palm Beach suit.
The elephants shuffled and watched us.
“Yes,” Iris said. “I’m almost sure it’s here.”
She stopped, with a little scream. We all stood petrified in our steps. Because, from behind us, an all too familiar voice had sounded, steely, and very, very low:
“Hands up. Every one of you. Turn around. Stick your hands up.”
Slowly, in unison, like some weird sort of circus act, the six of us wheeled around, our hands groping up into the air above our heads. We stood there, staring, the six of us: the policeman, the criminologist, the bridegroom, the aerialist, and Iris and me, the two suckers.
Standing there in front of the other row of elephants and squarely behind two pointed revolvers, were the clowns, the white clown and the blue clown—those nightmare clowns who, once again, had turned the tables.
And it was all so tragically simple. Iris had picked the wrong stall. The Rosa Brothers had come up from the trap door behind us. They had us beautifully under control—but beautifully. Even the policeman was without a plan.
And the Roses were very much on the job. In the grotesquely painted faces the two pairs of eyes were cruelly bright and steady. The Red Rose’s pink tongue slid out over his scarlet lips. He was staring straight at Zelide.
“Step forward, Zelide,” he said. “Out here, away from the others.”
Zelide gave a little moan. Mr. Annapopaulos kept his large arm stubbornly around her waist. Neither of them moved.
“We got you at last, Zelide. Just like we got Eulalia and Lina. Ten years we had to wait—ten years sweltering behind bars where you put us. You—” The eyes were fanatical now, half crazy. “Get forward.”
The elephants weaved with their trunks all around us, shuffled their straw, flicked their ears, and looked bored. Somewhere along the line one of them trumpeted and started an uproarious clatter.
Zelide looked grimly at Mr. Annapopaulos. “It is no use, Dmitri. You too must not suffer. I go.”
“No, no…”
“Yes.”
I admired her then. Zelide was a really brave woman.
“Come out, Zelide.” The White Rose had the rest of us covered. The Red Rose kept his revolver pointed on Zelide. She took a step forward, very erect.
“This way.” The Red Rose jerked along the stalls with his revolver. “Down here.”
Zelide moved forward. The Red Rose stepped in behind her. They started up the aisle between the elephant stalls. It was horrible. A sort of mock execution, a terrible, half-mad mockery of an execution.
Zelide moved along. The elephant down the line trumpeted again. Zelide walked more quickly. She reached a stall. The Red Rose was close behind her. Then, like lightning, Zelide dived into the open stall. There was a scuffling and the wild trumpeting again.
Then Zelide’s voice screaming, “Edwina! Get him, Edwina! The Red Rose! Get him!”
It was sheer lunacy from then on. The Red Rose stiffened. I saw him jerk the revolver around. I saw his finger on the trigger. A shot was fired. The trumpeting teetered over into a wild, animal scream of fury. Then an elephant was charging—a vast mammoth of an elephant charging, breaking out of the stall, head raised, trunk bristling, a huge, inexorable elephant with an immense pink ribbon around its neck. Edwina!
I saw the Red Rose hesitate, stare in horror at that terrifying sight. Then he started to run, and Edwina was lumbering after him.
“Get him, Edwina. Get him!”
The White Rose still had us covered. At least, up till then, he had. But, as Zelide’s voice rang out again, he faltered and glanced over his shoulder. Instantly, all with the same idea, Mr. Annapopaulos, the policeman, the Beard, and I leaped forward, knocked the revolver out of his hand, and tumbled him to the floor.
I scrambled up, leaving the White Rose to the tender mercies of the others. I wheeled around to Edwina. I was just in time to see her head trundle down. Then there was a scream—a human scream. I saw the immense pink ribbon flapping. Then I saw other colors. I saw the white of the clown, waving helplessly in the air, encircled by the viselike trunk.
Zelide ran out of the stall. Iris and I ran forward, too.
For a moment the Red Rose was, madly, up in the air there, screaming. Then he was hurled to the ground.
Zelide rushed forward. “Edwina!” she shouted. “Leave him alone now. Don’t kill him. Leave him, Edwina!”
Even in its fury, the elephant seemed to hear and obey. She backed, trumpeting, shaking her trunk.
Zelide and Iris and I rushed forward. The Red Rose was there, twisting and turning in the straw. I pounced on him. He had no strength left. I saw Zelide’s eyes gleaming with triumph.
“Edwina—she save me. I know if I can get him to her stall, she save me. The Roses—
they remember and hate for ten years. But Edwina remembers forever. Edwina, the elephant, she never forgets.”
The others were hurrying to us now, lugging the White Rose with them. I pulled the dazed Red Rose to his feet. We all crowded around.
“Edwina, she is shot. But a little revolver shot—to Edwina it is a mere flea-bite, yes?” Zelide was coping enthusiastically with Edwina.
Edwina seemed to love it. She was puffing a little, but she was perfectly calm again. And her trunk stopped weaving. Ever so delicately, she curled its tip around Zelide’s waist.
“Edwina!” we shouted. “Edwina! Bravo, Edwina!”
And, she smirked. I swear she did.
X
There was high festivity and merry-making in the dressing-room of Madame Zelide, world-famous, world-beloved aerialist. The Red Rose and the White Rose had been taken away by the police. Soon we, too, would have to follow to the police station. But at the moment our joy was unconfined.
Sweet red wine was pouring with abandon. Madame Zelide and Mr. Annapopaulos, giving vent to their warm Southern temperaments, were kissing everyone at random.
They kissed me, both of them; they kissed Iris. They even dared to kiss the Beard, who, dowagers forgotten, was beaming broadly, perched on a stool. Everything was confusion.
No one seemed to realize that Iris and I were still at sea. We’d been through hellfire. We’d run the gamut of every kind of emotion. We’d got straw in our hair—actually and figuratively. But we still had only the mistiest idea of what it was all about.
That didn’t seem to matter.
At the peak of the toasts, the door burst open, and the ringmaster, resplendent in top hat and tails, surged in on a wave of enthusiastic blonde aerialists. He rushed to Madame Zelide and kissed her. Then he swept the Beard and Iris and me into a mass embrace.
“You save the circus!” he said. “When it happens, when you tug Madame from the trapeze, I say—the end. The most terrible thing! But now we find the trapeze rope—she was half cut through. Those fiends, those madmen! Certainly Madame would have plunged to her death. You save us from the most terrible of tragedies.” His enthusiasm mounted: “Free tickets. For every performance I give you free tickets. The best—boxes.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 125