Rook went on, not quite knowing what he was seeking. There must, he knew, be guards and attendants around the place to watch the animals and the property; now he could hear a rather noisy poker game going on somewhere in one of the farther dressing rooms, somewhere else the click of thrown dice, and in the chill air there was the faint scent of coffee. It was a moment after that that Howie Rook realized that he was being followed; he realized that he had been subconsciously aware of being followed for several minutes! He stopped short, then rashly turned and hurried back the way he had come. Nobody was there.
“Overactive imagination,” he decided sensibly, and went on. And then again there came that prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck, the warning of that seventh sense which some people and most animals have…
He hurried on, turning around the outside of the Big Top, ducking under guy ropes and rigging, until at last he reached the steps of the dressing room where his clown costume hung on its hanger beside Hap Hammett’s and the others’, and once in that comparative haven bethought himself of the possible comfort of tobacco, which he had been long without. He sought in the pockets of his clown jacket for a dollar cigar—he remembered having left a handful there—but they were mysteriously gone!
Rook stood there, scratching his head, and was suddenly caught in the bright blaze of a powerful flashlight. He whirled to see the ferret-eyed man in the bright Hawaiian sport shirt, who was looking in upon him curiously, almost suspiciously.
“Hello,” said Howie Rook.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the man. “I knew you were hanging around late, but I’d have sworn you went home. I saw somebody coming out of here about ten minutes ago—”
“I think maybe we’ve had a sneakthief,” Rook said slowly. “Because now that I think of it, somebody’s searched this dressing room in a hurry. This isn’t the way I left my stuff.”
The man frowned, and came up the steps to look around. “You miss anything?”
“Only about a dozen expensive cigars,” Rook confessed. “It doesn’t matter, really.”
“Cigars, yet! Well, the last clown out of here at night is supposed to snap the padlock, but half the time they forget. You’re late, friend. You missed the last bus for the yards.”
Rook thought. “Any place I can get me a taxi?”
“You can phone for one from out front in the booth. Failing that, you can play cards with the owl crew or bed yourself down with the hyenas.” The man watched as Rook came down the steps and then rather pointedly slammed the door and snapped the padlock.
Rook thanked him, and hurried off—thinking of a hot bath and a cool bed. Then he stopped, almost mid-stride. Because there had been something else missing from the pocket of his clown coat—the infernal dog biscuits he had palmed and dumped there all afternoon! It was conceivable that some light-fingered person around the circus would filch cigars, but not liver-flavored doggy tidbits.
He stood there for a minute, wondering. There must be some reasonable explanation, there had to be! Methodically, he began to go through the pockets of his Sunday suit—but found money and everything else just where it should have been…
And then he felt his hat move, heard a swift, sibilant hiss overhead, and a “plunk” in the tent pole beside him. When he turned, Howie Rook saw that his brand-new Homburg had left his head and was now neatly pinned to the tent pole by a knife, which seemed to be still quivering from the force of the throw.
Rook was a reasonably prudent man, and a reasonably frightened one, and he saw no point in charging off into the inky blackness unarmed as he was. He realized he was standing almost underneath one of the night lights, a perfect target. Swiftly he pulled the knife from the hat, hesitated, then put the hat on his head and the knife in his pocket, and got out of there. No longer did he have the feeling that he was being followed, but other and far more unpleasant feelings had been superimposed. Suddenly he wanted lights and the company of his fellow man; he wanted to be in Joe’s Grill and Bar with a mug of dark ale and some cronies beside him, listening to the juke box. Anywhere but here.
He hurried down the Midway, and found the pay-phone booth occupied by Mary Kelly du Mond, who waved at him cheerfully through the glass. He waved back—he would have waved at one of the Ubangi women in the side show at that moment. But Kelly was something, he had to admit to himself, even in street clothes. “My taxi is on its way,” she said brightly as she emerged. “Want to share it? We both seem to have missed the last bus.”
Just looking at her made him feel better. “So I have already been advised, my dear. But I hadn’t planned on bunking in the circus train tonight; I have a hotel room in the town.”
“I don’t blame you,” Mary Kelly said. “Forty people in one frowzy old Pullman, and not even a diner where you can get a cup of coffee or anything…”
He hesitated, and was lost. “Would you perhaps care to have a drink with me in town somewhere?” he asked diffidently. “It’s not really so very late.”
“Lo-o-o-ove it!” cried the bumptious beauty. “I was hoping you’d ask me,” She slipped an arm through his, and as they walked out toward the highway she hummed a happy little tune. Howie Rook, somewhat worn and frazzled with his experiences of the day, still found himself wondering just what song it was that the Syrens sang…
6
But Lord! how everybody’s looks, and discourse in the street, is of death and nothing else…
—Samuel Pepys
“JUST THINK OF IT,” said Mary Kelly, snuggling up rather close to him in the taxicab as they rolled toward the town of Vista Beach. “A date! In this racket a girl almost never has a date unless she’s in a town where she knows somebody. You see, the management fines you a week’s pay if you’re caught romancing with anybody who’s with the show—I mean really with it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a convent or something.”
Howie Rook was beginning to feel as if he were in a spider web or something—but this particular spider had soft blue-black curly hair and bright blue eyes; it was the ancient Irish combination which had always disturbed him and no doubt had disturbed thousands of other men too. And after all, a café was a safe enough place. “Champagne,” he said grandly to the waiter who ushered them into a rear booth at the Mermaid Grotto. He had a certain part to play.
“Lemonade,” corrected his fair companion. “Not necessarily from choice, but you just try doing a headstand on a fifty-foot trap with even the teeniest hang-over! It spells kerplunk!” They finally settled for the lemonade and a pitcher of dark beer. Mary Kelly also thought that she might have just a bite to eat, said bite eventually consisting of a double New York-cut steak, very rare “and hold the potatoes.”
“I caught your act this afternoon,” Rook told her. “But not tonight. It scares me.”
“It scares me too,” the lovely girl confessed. “But it’s a living. And I have a knack for rhythm and balance, so I guess I might as well use it. And don’t forget, Gordo is always down there below. He may not be the brightest man in the world, but he’s quick and strong—he used to be an adagio dancer, believe it or not.”
“I believe it,” said Howie Rook dryly. “A man of many talents, eh?” He gingerly fingered the throwing knife in his pocket, a short, stubby knife with light handle, thick heavy blade, sharp as a needle at the point.
“Those Sicilians!” Mary Kelly murmured, shaking her head. “Me, I like the quieter type man.” She was definitely in a talkative mood, and he had little or no difficulty in working her around to the topic of James McFarley.
“What an absolute doll!” she said reminiscently between bites at her slab of rare steak; the steer that the meat was cut from, Rook thought, must still be breathing. “He was so interested in everybody at the circus and what made us tick.” She sloshed ketchup over her meat, which made Rook wince slightly. “You know,” she continued, “Mr. McFarley’s the kind of sensitive, understanding older man that a girl like me could go for in a big way—the kind of man who could t
ake her away from this traveling madhouse, away from risking her neck twice a day for a measly two fifty a week. Married up to a man like him, a girl could lead a normal life and not worry about the calories. As it is, I have to watch my figure all the time or nobody will watch it. See what I mean?”
Rook saw, though he was somewhat bemused by her eyelashes. He was for no reason at all reminded of the remark accredited to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who at over eighty met a luscious young woman at a reception, and said, “Oh, to be sixty again!” “I hear McFarley used to throw very charming cocktail parties,” he said casually.
Was he wrong, or did she start perceptibly? “I wouldn’t know; I never got to one.”
“He was quite a one for hanging around the Polar Club, too,” Rook pressed gently.
Mary Kelly said quickly, “Oh? I don’t know much about nightspots; I don’t get to go very often because they always expect you to drink and as I told you, in my profession I can’t. I hate to seem like a fuddy-dud, but that’s the way it has to be. Why, sometimes when I go to a party I take along a case of Cokes or ginger ale, just so I’ll have a glass in my hand. In case the host doesn’t have any soft drinks. It saves sending out.”
“Very considerate of you,” Rook told her. He was looking at her mouth, which was well worth looking at. “By the way, just what shade of lipstick do you use?”
“Lipstick?” She looked puzzled. “Oh, all sorts. Why?”
“Just idle curiosity,” said Howie Rook, feeling slightly deflated. So women made it harder by shifting their colors? Yet the shade Mary Kelly was wearing was very like the color of the imprint on a certain cocktail napkin he remembered. “The circus is a fascinating place,” he said. “Nothing like it in the world. But some of the people seem oddly superstitious—imagine them calling your friend McFarley the ‘Jinx Man’ behind his back!”
The girl shrugged her curvaceous shoulders. “Oh, that. You know, circus people are real funny sometimes. Like you can’t throw your hat on a bed and you mustn’t whistle in a dressing room, stuff like that. And there’s a band number—it’s von Suppé’s “Cavalry Overture”—whenever it’s played somebody dies or there’s a serious accident or something, or so a lot of people think. Leo Dawes doesn’t believe it himself, but he gets criticized so much when he plays it that he only uses it once in a while, to fill in.”
“Oh, by the way, did he play it recently?”
“Only a few bars of it, last week—the time the baby bulls got pernickety as they often do, and started to make an exit through the customers’ entrance. Why?”
“Just wondering,” said Rook. “Go on, my dear.”
“You mean about Mr. McFarley and the jinx thing? Oh, it’s just some people think it’s unlucky to have amateurs trying to get into the act, that it throws things off. But none of what happened last week was Mr. McFarley’s fault, except maybe the time he sucked a lemon in front of the grandstand and made Leo Dawes break up and bust up the rhythm for the Nondellos, and of course McFarley didn’t mean that, he just didn’t know any better. I’m sure it must have been just some darn fool juvenile delinquent—we get them around here occasionally—who let the rabbit loose and busted up Hap Hammett’s act—that Hap covered it wonderfully, as an old trouper like him would do. And it was probably the same little devil who put the white mice in the bulls’ hay and almost got them to stampede. Some kid with a lot of pet animals and real crazy ideas.”
“Mice?” said Rook, putting down his beer.
“Oh, yes. It was in the middle of a show. Some of these little hoodlums will do just anything. This one let loose some pet mice around the bulls, and they of course went crazy. How would you like to have a mouse running up your nose, especially if you had a nose six feet long, God forbid? Biddy was the real hero of that one.”
“Heroine,” corrected Rook. “Go on, my dear.”
“Well, Gordo—he works with the bull men and around the horses when I’m not needing him; everybody in the show doubles and triples just like I have to ride in a howdah in the spec number—Gordo thought fast for once. He rushed over and got the little ape out of her cage, which, thank goodness, didn’t happen to be locked, and let her loose. The bulls of course are used to Biddy and don’t mind her at all because they live together. She just loves mice, so it came out all right.”
Rook was slightly bewildered. “You mean Biddy caught the mice?”
“Oh, yes, every one. And she ate them,” Mary Kelly said, almost apologetically. “Like they were smorgasbord.”
He gulped. “But at least that was rather fast thinking on Gordo’s part, wasn’t it?”
“Him?” she said. “All he’s really good for is to stand between me and a busted neck. And do you know, he’s got the nerve to keep trying to get me to team with him during the winter layoff in a knife-throwing act! Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to throw knives at my fair white body, even if I have to wash dishes first!”
Rook, still conscious of that weight in his pocket and the rip in his new Homburg, said: “You don’t trust his aim, then?”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t trust Gordo. You know the old saying in show business about two-acts? They almost always drift into using a lower berth, to save train fare. And I’ll have none of that.” She attacked a large piece of lemon-meringue pie. “Gordo is tops with a knife, though. Probably the best in the circus.”
“You mean he isn’t the only one who has that hobby?”
“Heavens, no! The boys around the circus practice knife throwing the way farmers throw horseshoes, almost all of them. You see, you get so bored between shows. A lot of them are good at it. Leo Dawes is a whiz at it, Tommy Bayne, the boss rigger, is pretty good. Even the midgets work at it; you see a good knife act can get winter billing almost anywhere, and that takes care of the bread-and-butter thing.”
Rook hadn’t thought of that angle. The people of the circus did have a bleak period during the winter. “Then just what do most of you do during the layoff time?” he asked.
“Anything, almost. The clowns do some Shrine Circuses or a little TV work or maybe a vaudeville turn or even parlor-magic stuff for parties…”
“And the rest of you? The aerialists and equestrians and so on?”
“Most of them are foreigners on temporary work permits. The circus management has an in with Immigration; they can get anybody who is under contract to the show into the country on a work permit, but just for the circus season. When it’s over, they just have to grab the first ship home to the old country. It’s tough on some of them; like the Nondellos, they do so want to have Speedy stay here and go to school. She’s half Americanized already. They want to stay, but they’ve struck some snag, and Art and Gina are worried sick about it.”
“The Land of Promise, and we don’t perform all our promises.” Rook nodded, and ordered more beer. “So every fall most of the circus people scatter all over the world? It must be something of a job to get them all together again, come the opening day?”
“Oh, they come. Or else they’re replaced by somebody else just as good or maybe better…” She broke off suddenly, murmured something about powdering her nose, and fled. Rook blinked, then turned and surveyed the front of the bar. There was Muscle Man Gordo up forward, downing a tall drink.
“Ouch!” said Rook to himself. There was more here than met the eye—there was always more than met the eye, or the brain. “The world is out of joint, and why should I—” He watched as Gordo tossed off his drink, threw money on the mahogany, and went out.
Mary Kelly was taking her time in the powder room; during her absence a number of other circus people came and went—among them Leo Dawes, the man in the Hawaiian sport shirt, Bozo the clown, and Maxie and a group of dwarfs and midgets. Rook made himself as inconspicuous as possible, as at the moment he had no desire to join them in any conviviality.
Mary finally came back, and sat down. While away she had repaired her lipstick, much to Rook’s disappointment, as he wanted to check the color. “
This place is getting to be like Grand Central Station,” she said lightly, almost too lightly. “Maybe because it’s the only dive in town.”
“I don’t think Gordo saw you,” Rook told her. “What if he did?”
She didn't smile. “Just that he’d have made a scene, probably. Or tried to join us or something, and embarrassed you. Nobody knows what goes on in that thick skull of his.”
“Was Gordo jealous of McFarley?”
“McFarley and everybody else I even look at! Even poor little Olaf, my most devoted swain.”
“Olaf? The clown midget?” Rook blinked.
She nodded. “Oh, sure—midgets always get crushes on big girls, didn’t you know? Olaf wants to marry me and take me away from it all, so he says. But he only makes about enough to keep me in underwear, and I hear he’s frightfully in debt besides. And of course I’d die first!”
“But—” Rook began.
“That’s the way it is with the little people. You see, they’re born in normal families, and they can marry normal people and usually have normal children too. But besides, I don’t like Olaf. Nobody does, except maybe Captain Larsen. Larsen gets a kick out of the little guy; and sometimes lends him money when Olaf is in one of his usual jams.”
“You were saying that nobody knows what goes on in Gordo’s head. Nobody knows what goes on in anybody’s head. A man with a black scowl may have a migraine headache—or he may be contemplating bloody murder.”
“Murder?” she tasted the word, as if it were bitter on the tongue.
“Yes. Murder is rather a hobby of mine; I mean collecting clippings about unusual murders. Some of them are rather fascinating. There’s one from an A.P. dispatch some years ago. A woman and her lover, down in Chiloé, Chile, committed the perfect murder by tying up the unhappy husband and tickling him to death with chicken feathers!”
“Oh!” gasped Mary Kelly.
Rook nodded. “And they’d never have been caught if they hadn’t had a lover’s quarrel. She talked.”
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