Case with 4 Clowns

by Bruce, Leo

  At that moment the lights changed and Kurt entered the ring. He walked slowly, although perfectly upright, into the center, and then stopped to bow to the audience. His face was white and shadowed, but he seemed to have himself completely under control, holding the coiled whip closely to his side, while he raised the other hand in a sort of salute. Ansell held the gate-top of the tunnel, waiting for him to enter the cage. There was the clang of iron as Kurt entered the cage and slammed the door behind him. He bowed once again to the silent audience, and then turned to Ansell and gave a brief nod. The feeder stood upright on the top of the tunnel, opening the trap-door, and at the same time stamping with his feet on the wood, as I had seen him so often do, to persuade the lions out into the cage.

  The two lionesses came out first, and stood for a moment swinging their heads round as if to take in the crowd. Kurt cracked his whip and one of them slunk slowly towards the pedestal at the far side of the cage. The other animal moved slightly, and then turned its head back to the tunnel, as though contemplating a return. Kurt cracked his whip again sharply and advanced towards the lioness, which immediately walked over towards the corner. At that moment the third lion came to the mouth of the tunnel and without pausing leaped straight at the lion-trainer. His head was turned slightly to one side, watching the second beast, and he did not seem to see the danger coming. There was a sudden shout from Ansell, and the two figures fell to the ground together. I was on my feet without realizing the action, and only vaguely conscious of the cries around me from the rest of the audience.

  Ansell leaped quickly from the top of the tunnel and snatching up a long two-pronged fork began to jab savagely at the beast. “Fetch the gun!” he shouted to one of the hands standing near, and then, as if realizing that this would be too late, he flung open the door of the cage and himself went in. It seemed a crazy thing to do, but it was undoubtedly the only thing which could save the trainer, who was still lying motionless under the body of the lion. The animal stared for a moment at the new arrival, snarling with its head a little on one side, as if in doubt, and then Ansell took a step forward and prodded it with the prongs of the fork he was still holding. The lion moved back slowly, away from Kurt, and then suddenly turned and leaped into the tunnel, followed by the other two lionesses, which had not moved from their pedestals throughout the incident. One of the hands had the sense to leap on top of the tunnel and quickly drop the trap into place.

  Ansell bent over the figure of the trainer for a moment, and then quickly beckoned to Jackson, who was hurrying across the ring. The crowd was perfectly silent, watching the illuminated cage. There seemed to be no word spoken in the whole tent. Then the proprietor rose to his feet and motioned emphatically to the band, and they began to play “God Save the King.”

  Even then the audience would not leave the tent, but clustered down into the ring watching in horrified silence. At last Ansell and Jackson picked up the limp form and walked slowly through, the crowd falling quickly back on either side, and carried Kurt out of the big top towards his own wagon.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  May 3rd-4th.

  I WAITED, with the gathered crowd of circus people and members of the audience, outside Kurt’s wagon. When the doctor had arrived no one had been allowed in but Jackson. The crowd was fairly silent, murmuring a little among themselves, but for the most part lighting cigarettes and waiting. The circus artists in particular did not seem to wish to discuss the accident.

  After quite a short time the proprietor emerged, followed immediately by the doctor. Jackson stood for a moment on the top step of the wagon, as if he contemplated making a short speech, and then seemed to change his mind and walked down toward the crowd.

  “Well, how is he?” demanded a voice which I thought I identified as Ginger’s.

  “He’s dead,” said Jackson, as if he resented being forced to utter the words, and then walked quickly over towards his wagon.

  As the crowd began slowly to separate out, still silent, on the way to their various destinations, I pushed through to the doctor. He was just climbing into his car, which had been drawn up close to the lion-trainer’s wagon, and looked up at me with a faint expression of annoyance. He was a middle-aged, carelessly-dressed man, and I could imagine him being called away from a bridge-party only with urgent persuasion. Perhaps I did him an injustice, but, nevertheless, he was not pleased by my intrusion.

  “My name is Townsend,” I said.

  “Never heard of you,” the man snapped.

  “That is hardly the point,” I continued. “But I happen to be here with this circus in the company of William Beef, the private investigator. I wonder if you would mind telling me something before you leave?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Can you tell me exactly what killed Kurt?” I asked.

  “Good heavens, man,” said the doctor in some surprise. “Weren’t you in there when it happened? Did you see the condition his head was in? My dear fellow, don’t ask silly questions.”

  “We have reason,” I persisted, with justifiable exaggeration, “to suspect foul play.”

  “Well,” the doctor hesitated for a moment, “that’s hardly in my line. I did not, of course, make a post-mortem. But I’ll stake my reputation that the man died purely and solely from head wounds inflicted by the teeth and claws of a lion.”

  “Thank you,” I said dismally.

  “Quite all right, quite all right,” snapped the doctor abruptly, and with a scraping of gears he was gone. I walked slowly back to the wagon.

  So it was all over, and Kurt had died in the lion-cage. What the doctor had said ruled out the last faint hope I had had; there was no need for a silent shot from the outside of the cage, a poisoned splinter from a blow-pipe. The head wounds had killed him, and had apparently been sufficiently bad to kill any normal man. It was impossible to entertain any other ideas but that the whole thing had been an accident. There was so much that had made it less than that though. For instance, who persuaded Kurt to get out of his bed? That had led in some measure to his death, even if it was not murder. It was as if so many things had combined together. There was the storm, which had undoubtedly upset the lions. There had been the slight scuffle in the tunnel before the show. The animal must have been nervous and angry when the trap had opened, and attacked the first thing he saw—which was Kurt standing in the cage.

  What was the use now of Beef’s evidence? He had pottered off in his stupid way, just at the moment when he was most needed. It is true there had been no murder, but that made matters even worse for him. Another case in which he had made the wrong conclusions. Luckily, it was away from the normal publicity of the newspapers, and might receive no attention from the public. But the whole affair was so stupid that I felt a sort of fury with the Sergeant for starting the thing, for bringing me up, for even interesting me further in the “case,” when my better judgment had told me to pack up and go home many days ago.

  It was in this mood that I received Beef some three-quarters of an hour later. He walked into the wagon and sat down with a broad grin.

  “Well?” he said, and placed his large red hands on his knees and looked at me with his eyes twinkling.

  “So you’ve come back,” I said. “You’ve actually got back here. The one moment when you might conceivably have been of some use, you were just not here. Well, where have you been?”

  “Oh, I dropped into the ‘Goat and Compasses’ on my way back,” said Beef. “Nice little house. Got talking and that, otherwise I might have got back an hour or so ago. Show finished a bit early, didn’t it? Anything happened?”

  I felt that I must somehow shock him out of this horrible good humor, surprise him, startle him, anything to change his broad grin to a more serious expression.

  “There’s been an accident,” I said coldly. “There’s been a death in the circus during the performance. We’ve seen a head that was nothing but a mess of bloody pulp and white splinters of bone …”

  The
effect on Beef was instantaneous and amazing. His face seemed to freeze with his mouth slightly open, staring at me for almost a minute before he spoke.

  “You don’t mean,” he said at last, “you don’t mean to say that he went in after all? You don’t mean to tell me that he got up and actually went into that lion-cage after all?”

  “How did you know it was Kurt?” I asked. It was my turn to be amazed.

  “How did I know!” said Beef scornfully. “Of course I knew. But why didn’t you stop him? He told me before I left, in fact he promised me, that he wouldn’t get up for the lion act. Do you think I should have thought of going away otherwise?”

  “But how was I to know anything about that?” I demanded. “You’ve told me nothing all through the case, and yet you expect me to know everything.”

  “You shouldn’t have needed telling,” said Beef unreasonably. “You ought to have stopped him, that’s what you ought to have done.”

  “Beef …” I began. But the Sergeant appeared to be thinking of something else.

  “Police been?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I expect so. I don’t care. You’d better go out and see.” I was utterly and completely weary of the whole affair.

  “Yes,” said Beef. “I can see that I’d better. Well, you get to bed. It’ll do you good. I’ll look after this from now on.” And I took his advice immediately.

  But I seemed scarcely to have fallen asleep when I was awakened again by his hand roughly shaking my shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do this morning. Come on, get up.”

  It was quite late in the morning, but the circus had not moved on, so that I had not been disturbed by the starting up of lorries.

  “That’s right,” said Beef to my query. “They’ve canceled Monday’s performance, so that they can stay on here until Tuesday morning and get this thing over and done with.”

  As I dressed hurriedly, he explained again that he had a lot to do during the day. “And first of all,” he concluded, as I followed him down the wagon steps, “I want to go and have a look round the zoo.”

  The Wild Animal Zoo was deserted when we reached it, although the wooden fronts of the cages had all been taken down. Beef started at the far end and walked carefully along all the cages, peering through into each one without speaking. The solitary lion looked up at him a little resentfully, with the remains of the meat that had been given him that morning still grasped between its forepaws, and then, blinking in the bright sun, put its head down again and continued the meal. One by one, Beef stopped before each cage and seemed to be taking stock of the animals.

  “Why on earth are you doing all this?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”

  “Well,” said Beef with a twinkle in his eye, “I might be looking for someone to take me on at darts.” And then, after a pause he added, “But I’m not.”

  It was obviously useless to attempt to question the Sergeant when he was in this frame of mind. I walked on with him without speaking.

  “You see,” he went on in a little while, “I like you to have the same chances that I have, if you see what I mean. I mean, it’s not fair to keep you in the dark, is it?” And again he chuckled.

  When at last we emerged from the zoo, it was to find a middle-aged constable looking for Beef.

  “Which of you two gentlemen is Mr. William Beef?” he asked.

  “I am,” said Beef promptly. “And what might you want?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said the constable. “I’m the coroner’s officer, and I was told to come up and see if you’d got anything what might be useful….”

  “Yes, I know all about that,” said Beef.

  “Of course you do,” said the constable. “I’ve heard a bit about you, you know. In the Force once yourself, weren’t you? Until you took up with this here fancy game of private investigation.” There was tremendous scorn in those last two words, but Beef did not seem disturbed.

  “So you heard of me?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” said the policeman. “You’ve been held up to me as a sort of a warning, as you might say. ’Course, you won’t come to no good on that game. Just look what a pickle you got yourself into in that last business of yours.”

  “So that’s what they say about me in the Force now, is it?” demanded Beef with indignation. “Slandering my name behind my back, that’s what it is. Worse than a lot of gossips. Let me tell you, young man, that it takes more than a blue uniform to make an investigator.”

  The “young man,” who could not have been more than three years younger than the Sergeant, seemed to regard this as a rare joke.

  “Still,” said Beef, “be that as it may, there’s something I want to talk to you about, if you don’t mind.”

  “Am I in on this?” I asked, as the two began to walk away.

  The Sergeant hesitated, as if in doubt. Then: “No,” he said. “You can have your turn after. I won’t be long.” And talking emphatically he led the policeman off towards, I suspected, the “Goat and Compasses.” There was nothing for me to do except waste a bit of time around the ground until he returned.

  But before Beef came back, a car drew up at the gate of the tober half an hour later, and two policemen climbed out and walked into the zoo. When they emerged again they were leading Peter Ansell forcibly between them.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  May 4th.

  BEEF came into the wagon in a state which I can only describe as triumphant. I suspected him of having celebrated something or other with the coroner’s officer down at the “Goat and Compasses,” though I tactfully refrained from reminding him of it. I might have pointed out to him that, only twelve hours before there had been a tragedy, and that a dead man was lying not fifteen yards from us now. When he spoke, however, it was quietly and soberly.

  “You know,” he said, “Shakespeare was right.”

  I had never heard the Sergeant quote from any of his country’s literature, and waited with interest to see what hackneyed phrase he would choose.

  “ ‘There is a destiny what shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,’ ” he announced. “I’d give a great deal not to have gone away yesterday.”

  “It’s too late to think of that now,” I pointed out.

  “I know, I know,” said Beef. “Still, I could have saved the poor fellow’s life if I’d ever had the slightest suspicion that he’d do anything as crazy as show the lions.”

  “You mean, I suppose, that he wasn’t fit enough? That a lion could sense illness, and take advantage of it?”

  “Now look here,” said Beef impressively, “if I’m going to tell you this story, I’m going to tell it. I don’t want you putting in silly suggestions all the time. It may make good reading, but I like to express things clear. We’ll go right back to the beginning and you shall hear how it is I’ve been able to give information to the police about a horrible murder that’s been done in Jacobi’s Circus.”

  “But,” I began inevitably.

  Beef held up his formidable-traffic-controlling hand. “You heard what I said,” he reminded me. “Now sit tight and listen. This is the biggest success I’ve ever had, and I don’t want it spoiled with a lot of sneering remarks from you.”

  I was determined to interrupt. “All right, Beef,” I said. “I’ll listen. But, first of all, I’m going to ask you a question. How can you have had your biggest success when you didn’t prevent the man’s death?”

  “That was out of my hands,” said Beef, “as you shall hear in due course. No one in the world could have guessed that Kurt would get up yesterday and show those lions. Not Lord Simon Plimsol couldn’t have,” he added bitterly. “Nor Mr. Philo Vance, nor Dr. Thorndyke, nor any other of the detectives whose novels sell ten times what ours do. And if anyone blames me for not having prevented the murder, you can tell them that. No one,” his voice ran on towards a rhetorical climax. “Not the Lord Mayor of London, nor the Shah of Persia could have done di
fferent. I’m an investigator, and I investigated. After all, do any of them do more than that? Did Sherlock Holmes prevent the murders he had to find out about? Which of them ever stopped their man before he done it? Why, some of them start investigating a murder and have half a dozen more before they make an arrest. I’ve read cases where a cold-blooded assassin, with the ‘keenest brain in the world of investigation’ smelling out his doings, has gone so far as to poison, blow up, stab and strangle three or four innocent people before the reader knows who he is. And just to make a better story of it, mark you. Unscrupulous, that is. Human life should come before royalties and cheap editions. Or film rights, for that matter. I don’t believe in a lot of blood to give satisfaction to people what pays tuppence in a lending library. And if I could have stopped that poor fellow being killed, I would have, whether you lost your chance of writing a masterpiece or not. And that’s more than you can say for many of them. Why, if they was to stop the murderer first, there wouldn’t be many murders to write about. And what’s more,” he added savagely, “there wouldn’t be any writers making handsome fortunes telling the tale. Now, I’ll tell you the story.