The White Elephant Mystery (8 page)

“Excuse me!”
Socker said as he turned back to the man who had spoken to him. “I just remembered my wife wanted me to bring home a colored balloon. She’s sickly, so I sent my boy out to get one while I remembered it.”

“That’s all right,” the man in the usher’s hat said. “I just wondered if you had a couple of big bills that you would care to exchange for smaller ones? You see we get so many little ones that it makes it pretty hard to carry them.”

“Why, sure,” Socker said, and he reached in his inside pocket for his wallet. He pulled it out and scowled as he looked in it. “Here’s a couple o’ twenties. Will they do?”

“They’ll do fine,” the man said and reached into his own pocket and brought forth a big handful of crumpled bills. He very carefully counted them out and then handed some to Socker, saying, “There’s forty dollars. Thank you very much.”

Socker as carefully counted the bills himself, with the man’s eyes on him; and when he got through he said, “You only gave me thirty-nine dollars. A ten, two fives, and nineteen ones. See?”

“You’re sure?” the man in the usher’s cap said. “Let me count ’em again.” He took the bills and counted them again and when he had finished he said, “By cracky, you’re right. I’m terribly sorry!”

He added a dollar bill to the ones he held and counted them into Socker’s hand again. “Thirty-nine, forty. Right?” he asked.

A large, powerful hand dropped on the collar of the man’s coat as Socker stood in front of him with the money still in his hand. “Count it, Socker,” Cannonball McGinnty said as he tightened his grip on the man’s collar. “You’re probably short a ten and a five this time.”

Socker counted the money very carefully this time and when he had finished he said, “Just a ten. I now believe the hand is quicker than the eye.”

Cannonball’s other hand stabbed downward and grabbed at the closed fist of the man he was holding. He twisted and with a howl of pain the man opened his hand. A wadded ten dollar bill dropped to the ground.

“That’ll do it!” Socker said to Cannonball. “Let’s take him over to your substation in Riverton. I’ll put a charge against him, and maybe we can make him talk.”

“He’ll talk, or else!” Cannonball growled. “He—”

“Is he a grifter, Mr. Furlong?” Tommy wanted to know.

“That’s just what he is,” Socker said, “and before we get through with him maybe we’ll know what cooks around here. You kids go on into the big show. I’ll join you later. Get seats in the front, right below Spitfire’s rig, and I’ll find you.”

“Okay, Socker,” Djuna said as Cannonball and Socker moved away, with the tricky-looking man wearing the usher’s cap between them.

The circus band was playing Liszt’s “First Hungarian Rhapsody” to end the preliminary concert before the main performance, when Tommy and Djuna slipped through the gateway from the menagerie, around to the right, and down into the front row just below Spitfire Peters’s flying rig.

Over five thousand people were crowded on tier after tier of seats under the big top. The cries of candy butchers selling “juice” rose and fell throughout the length of the big tent. Children screamed and cried and laughed with delight and anticipation.

There was a long ruffle of drums as Tommy and Djuna sat down. The band struck up a spirited march. The great curtains from the performers’ tent opened and the “grand spec,” in all its spangled glory, moved around the hippodrome arena.

Clowns, aerialists, acrobats, equestrians and equestriennes, tightrope walkers, roaring lions and black panthers, elephants and gnus, jugglers, and more elephants, and clowns. Pageants unfolded as dainty, daring and dazzling elfs in shorts and bras and bobbed hair danced around the great track, seeming to float through space effortlessly.

Tommy and Djuna were on their feet cheering and applauding as the great spectacle moved around the track, and then a coloratura soprano, perched high above the bandstand, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

And the show was on!

“Laugh, clown, laugh,”—and thirty buffoons of all sizes and shapes—the pegs upon which the circus is hung—burst from behind the great curtain to swarm over the rings and platforms, up the rigging and around the track, dressed in their individual versions of the cap and bells. Fat clowns, lean clowns, tall clowns, midget clowns—all with a laugh in every motion they made, from the one who pretended he had got on a tightwire by mistake, thirty feet above the tanbark with no net under him, and who kept slipping off the wire to hang by his fingers and toes while people screamed with fright and laughter, to the sad-faced little midget who sat down on the track and cried, with swerving horses racing around him and plunging over him.

Around the rings galloped the aristocracy of the circus, the equestrians and equestriennes, piling on each other’s shoulders while the snow-white Percherons galloped to the whistling tune of the ringmaster’s singing whip.

Far overhead, the aerialists stood, each at the end of his pedestal bar with the fly bar in his hands—poised, confident—moving now with flowing grace as they swung high under the top folds of the big tent or dropped the fly bar and whirled into space until their catcher’s hands slapped on their wrists, and people let out great gulps of air that they had almost swallowed.

“Jumping Jupiter!”
Tommy Williams said with a wail. “I can’t watch it all! There’s so much you can’t look at everything. We’ll have to come every day and look at something different every day, or we won’t remember
anything!
… Look!”

Djuna followed his finger with his eyes and saw Fifi Lamont, queen of all the high-wire artists, balancing perilously fifty feet above the center platform, with no net under her, smiling and bowing as she went through her marvelous performance. Well she knew that a split second of wrong timing might send her crashing to the ground, to her death or permanent injury; but it was all in a day’s work for an artist of Fifi Lamont’s charm.

Elephants, seals, dogs and horses were performing on the platforms and in the rings, now, while jugglers and tightwire walkers worked on the wires overhead. Tumblers cut graceful arcs through the air as teeter-board artists bounced people high and the “risly” acts juggled people with their feet—and all the while, clowns went on with their buffoonery.

“Look! Look!” Tommy said suddenly. “There’s that girl Socker was talking to in the chow tent!”

Djuna looked and saw three matched Percherons, snow-white, loping easily around the ring right in front of him, and on their backs were a man and a woman. Each had one foot on one of the outside Percherons and both had a foot on the back of the middle Percheron. Riding on the shoulders of the man was Joy Maybeck, her hands flung gracefully above her head as she smiled down at Djuna, and standing on the shoulders of the woman was another equestrienne who was almost as pretty as Joy.

In another moment Joy was standing alone on the back of one of the Percherons, and just before she did a back somersault and came down on the rump of the still-galloping Percheron she waved a hand at Djuna. When she stood up and waved and shouted she made a curtsy as she passed him and Djuna said, “Golly, but she’s wonderful! I bet that back somersault was the new trick she was going to do.”

Then both Djuna and Tommy forgot about Joy Maybeck for the moment as the lights of the big tent began to fade, leaving a single spotlight aimed at the performer’s entrance.

Into the spotlight stepped Trixie Cella, her elfin figure wrapped in a silver cloak, her dark hair curled tight on her lovely head. Right behind her was Spitfire Peters, his athletic body clothed in snow-white tights, his carrot-colored hair flaming above his smiling face. And then came Ned Barrow, his black hair even blacker above his snow-white tights that emphasized the swelling muscles of his figure.

Ears strained to catch every syllable as the announcer introduced them, while they walked gaily across to the rope ladder that led up to the pedestal board and the rope that would take Ned Barrow up to the catch bar. The band struck up a lively air as Trixie dropped her cloak into waiting hands, wiped the soles of the cloth pumps she had made herself and stepped on the slender rope ladder with wooden rungs that led up to the pedestal board far overhead.

She maneuvered neatly around the bulge made by the net as she went up the ladder skillfully, while Spitfire made a last inspection of the net. He looked at and tested the horizontal stretch that would be directly under them—it was called the “big net”—and at the pieces that angled up from the ends and were called “aprons.” He then tested the cables between the aprons and the big net. They were known as “ridge ropes,” and caused more injuries than anything else.

As Trixie started up the slender rope ladder, Ned Barrow went up the web that led to the catch trap and the catch bar. He went up the rope hand over hand, his muscles bulging as he climbed.

Upon the pedestal board, Trixie slapped her hands with the rosin bag and then inspected the flying bar. It was wrapped with black bicycle tape and then covered with white muslin, the material that affords the least slippery purchase.

A few moments later Spitfire was beside her. He took the fly bar, stepped off and warmed up with a series of tremendous swings, rising to within a few inches of the canvas roof. He did one or two routine tricks, and then swung back on the pedestal board with the ease and grace of the expert.

The drums ruffled as Trixie took the fly bar between her hands and stood poised on the board. Ned Barrow lengthened his arc by arching his back and then thrusting his shoulders forward.

“Go!”
Spitfire called and Trixie went off the board in a long, sliding motion, her legs stiff and raised at a slight angle to her body. She swung out and back, then quickly pulled up, holding the bar at her waist.

“Go!”
Spitfire called again, and with a convulsive heave of her body, Trixie did a front flip over the bar and sailed down, head foremost, toward the oncoming Ned Barrow. For one frightening instant she seemed to be going by him, then their grips meshed, and she swung below him.

On the pedestal board Spitfire had caught the bar with an iron hook after Trixie had left it; and now, watching Barrow’s swing, he dropped it. Trixie did a half-turn as Barrow let her go, and caught the bar to swing gracefully back to the board.

Spitfire did a “plange”—in which he had to get the bar behind him as he swung, by “skinning the cat,” before he let go. Then Trixie did a two-and-a-half, so that Ned Barrow caught her by the ankles instead of the wrists. She went off the pedestal board and worked into a tremendous swing. When Spitfire called
“Go!”
she released the bar, turned over once, turned again, and made one more half-turn, at the end of which her ankles slapped into Barrow’s hands.

“Nice going, Trix,” Spitfire said as she swung back to the board.

And at last came that time when Spitfire was to do his “triple”: a triple somersault between the time his hands left the fly bar and when Ned Barrow caught him.

The drums ruffled. In the front row, far below, Djuna trembled as his white face stared upward to look at Spitfire’s white form on the end of the board.

Ned Barrow lengthened his arc again and swung up and up as Spitfire went off the board in a long, fluid swing. It was Trixie who called,
“Hup!”
this time, and Spitfire released the bar to do his triple.

Then the whole tent was on its feet as Spitfire went by Ned Barrow as though he had been shot out of a gun, after he finished his triple. He sailed far across the net and struck a ridge rope before he bounced sickeningly in the air and crashed to the hippodrome track below with a hollow thud.

Djuna was over the rail and dropping to the track when Spitfire landed only a few feet away. He saw Spitfire’s head snap back and at the same instant he saw the lucky charm Spitfire always wore around his neck snap out from in under the top of his tights and saw it roll across the track toward him.

He scooped it up in his hand as he tried to make a flying dive to help break Spitfire’s fall. Then he was down beside the half-conscious flyer as Spitfire opened his eyes briefly and gasped,
“The White Elephant!”

Then attendants swarmed down on them and pushed Djuna away as they gathered Spitfire in their arms and hurried toward the performers’ entrance with his broken body.

Djuna stood there stunned, not seeing any of the people around him until an usher pushed him and said, “Get back into your seat, Bud. The show has to go on!”

Djuna looked up and saw Trixie come off the pedestal board in a long dive, dipping her head under just before she reached the net, to bounce high and grasp the edge and turn a somersault to the ground. He half started to follow her as she ran toward the performers’ entrance, when the same usher gave him another push and said, “I told you to get back in your seat, Bud! Step on it, kid!”

The band went into a lively air again. The clowns tried harder than ever to make the people laugh.

Djuna, as he climbed back into his seat beside Tommy, was sick at heart. He saw the sign that he had seen a half-dozen times during the past ten days:

RAIN OR SHINE

THE WORLD’S GREATEST SHOW

WILL POSITIVELY APPEAR

The show must go on!

Never had the circus moved more in unison; the whistle of the equestrian director, denoting the changes of the acts, brought forth greater and greater efforts on the part of the performers; the clowns as they tumbled into the ring seemed to bubble with merriment.

Djuna glanced downward on the track and could see the small patch of dark red that was there where Spitfire had struck. He felt sick; and yet he knew that Spitfire, most of all, would want the show to go on!

Djuna turned and looked into Tommy’s white face and said, “I don’t think I want to see any more of the show today. Let’s go outside and tell Cannonball and Socker, if we can find them, and see if there is anything we can do for Trixie or Spitfire.”

“Jeepers, I don’t think I want to see any more either. I—I feel kinda sick,” said Tommy.