Murder of the Circus Queen

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A FEW minutes before seven o'clock that April evening, Betty and I reached the noisy lobby of the Madison Square Garden. The doors were just opening. Lines of men and women plodded toward the several ticket offices and the night resounded with the cries of the barkers, candy butchers, and popcorn men. To protect the public, Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt had assigned a special squad of policemen to the grand foyer, as well as to the six other public, and the five private entrances. But these uniformed men were little more than traffic supervisors for the bright-faced crowds shuffling across the terazzo floors. The real police work would fall to a detail of plainclothes men, selected from eighteen hundred operatives of many scattered detective districts and technical squads. As the crowds swept through the turnstiles, these swift-glancing hawks of the law would eye face after face, their memories racing through the Rogues' Gallery.

In the midst of the early swarm of spectators, I soon discovered the portly figure of District Attorney Merle K. Dougherty. Holding by each hand a small and almost toothless boy, the relentless prosecutor of our criminal courts stood enrapt before a highly coloured three-sheet circus poster. The District Attorney was a huge and fleshy man with curly red hair and prognathous jaw; a vital and magnetic firebrand. At my tap on his shoulder, he turned with unwieldy agility, the joy of circus time a-glisten in his bulging blue eyes.

"Hello, you two honeymooners!" he boomed. "Betty, you are getting prettier every day. Meet my nephews, aged nine and ten— Al and Jimmy."

"Has Thatcher Colt heard any rumours about this outfit?" went on Dougherty. "Hogan, my county detective, told me they had a very suspicious accident this afternoon—"

HE fell silent as we were joined by Colonel Tod Robinson. On his own grounds, the circus owner seemed a more impressive person than our afternoon caller at Headquarters. Wearing faultless evening raiment, but still chewing tobacco, Colonel Robinson carried himself like the ruler of a private domain. But he looked deeply worried. I introduced him and asked, with a casual air, if all went well behind the scenes.

"Our show starts at eight o'clock, no matter what happens," was the enigmatic reply as Robinson chewed off the corner of his cake of tobacco. "Meanwhile our troubles multiply. I just left a beautiful argument, on my way out here— a ruckus with these infernal Ubangis— I hope it doesn't spoil our show tonight."

"The Ubangis?" echoed Betty, puzzled.

"The big-lipped ladies," I reminded my wife.

"Those horrible-looking African savages with huge wooden rings grown in their mouths?"

"Exactly— the dark, platter-lipped lassies!" grinned Colonel Robinson, affably. "This is their second season with us. They've picked up a little English and can talk to American n*****s, and so now they're beginning to get ideas. But— speaking impartially— tonight they went too far, Of course, you've heard of Josie LaTour— she gets the biggest salary in the history of the business— well, when she showed up to-night LaTour found two Ubangi women in her dressing-room. They wouldn't tell how they got in nor what they wanted."

"Thieving?" suggested Dougherty.

"I suppose so. Anyway, LaTour lost her temper. She's always doing that— just a human tiger cat, anyhow. She grabs a khoubash— a whip made of rhinoceros hide— and lets the two Ubangi women have it."

A frown deepened above Colonel Robinson's troubled eyes.

"You can't whip people in the United States of America," he remarked plaintively. "Not even African savages. And the Ubangi savages have found that out. They are all sore at LaTour and right now they are having a council meeting in their dressing-room. I don't know what is going to happen!"

The Colonel hesitated a moment, and then added:

"I'll admit these Ubangis give me the creeps sometimes. They know more about vegetable poisons than all the college professors put together. In the bush, you know, they are considered great magicians. They can kill their enemies at a distance by the right spells."

As Colonel Robinson made this incredible statement, we were suddenly joined by Thatcher Colt. Out of the crowd the Commissioner appeared, precisely at seven o'clock, top-hatted and wearing the inevitable gardenia.

After an exchange of greetings, Colt drew Colonel Robinson aside and confided:

"I have a partial report on the death of your boss mechanic. At exactly three o'clock this afternoon he was standing on a perfectly rigid platform used during the show by an acrobat called Flandrin, and there is no evidence to show how he fell, unless he had an attack of vertigo. The autopsy is not yet complete."

"He never had vertigo before," asserted Colonel Robinson flatly.

"Well, if someone caused his death deliberately, how could it have been done?" demanded Thatcher Colt. "True, a number of acts were rehearsing at the time as well as the orchestra— but we have checked on everyone in the arena at the time— no one was near him. And of course, it was rather dark in the Garden at the time; very few lights were on."

"Just another peculiar accident!" muttered Colonel Robinson, with a disbelieving roll of his eyes. "But this circus is jinxed and let me tell you it's getting on my people's nerves. Murillo, the wire-dancer— you remember, he had one of those threatening letters— Murillo has quit cold. Jumped his contract, walked out on me an hour ago. And there may be others doing the same thing before we start the show."

"Didn't you tell me that the acrobat, Flandrin, also received one of those notes?"

"Yes, Flandrin got one!"

"And it was from Flandrin's platform the mechanic fell!"

"Why, yes!"

"Was Flandrin in the Garden at the time?"

"No— he has just landed from a steamer— returning from abroad."

"But Murillo has disappeared?"

"Well, I know where he is. Murillo merely quit. On the other hand-"

But Thatcher Colt, interrupting, reminded Robinson that we were to be taken on a tour behind the scenes. Without more delay, we followed the Colonel through the gates and then down a flight of concrete steps at the exhibition hall under the arena of Madison Square Garden. Here were the animal cages of Robinson's portable menageries, and the gaudy banner-line of the side-show. Crowds of groundlings were already gaping at the wild beasts and human freaks.

BETTY turned to me with a wise smile, full of wifely acumen.

"If Mr. Dougherty doesn't mind," she proposed, "I shall take charge of his nephews— show them everything to be seen down here and then take them to our box. You men can join us there!"

Down the aisle of the menagerie, she led the two miniature Doughertys. In a few words, for Dougherty's benefit. Colt condensed the story that had brought us together.

"But, of course, they are all nothing but coincidences," Dougherty promptly declaimed.

Colt paused in lighting a cigarette.

"You can't dismiss those coincidences with a wave of the hand," he objected. "Four men in this show have died. There is sound reason for the Colonel to believe someone is trying to ruin him. It may well be sheer accident but on the other hand we may be dealing with the most dangerous kind of enemy— a madman with a fixed idea for revenge, yet cunning enough to deceive anybody into believing he is perfectly sane. Perhaps we had better be starting."

"This way-past the cages of the carnivora," invited Colonel Robinson, taking on his hat in his best arena manner. "Someday I am going to have the greatest circus in the world— the one show that nobody will ever top. That is the only ambition I have in the world. And if I don't lose my backer, I'll bust the whole trust before I get through."

On the subject of the show, Colonel Robinson was positively lyrical.

The big circus cats, he explained garrulously, unless "born on the show" were captured in the jungle regions with traps and pits covered with jungle foliage and baited with young goats. But a new method o:fcapturing some wild beasts alive had beet devised, by the use of asphyxiating bullets When the creatures wake up, they are prisoners but unharmed. In his enthusiasm Colonel Robinson seemed quite to forget our curious errand. Colt had to urge on our journey.

"Why don't we get right back stage?' grumbled Dougherty, falling into step with me.

"I heard the Commissioner say he wanted to look around here first," I explained.

"What for?"

I SHOOK my head. I did not know. We had stopped in front of the Congress of Freaks and Wonders. At a chin level with the platform, we stood in front of the Ubangis, the principal attraction of the side-show. Nine of the savages stood on the platform ; five women and four men. It was my first sight of these fantastic people, lured to New York from an Isolated triangle of land in French Equatorial Africa. The great wooden rings in the women's mouths were intended to make their faces hideous, thus discouraging women stealers from other stronger tribes. Duck-billed and disc-lipped, the Ubangi women were called, and deservedly: they were like bloated monstrosities from some old book on demonology.

"These people are of the Mazzi tribe, from along the Shari River, south of Lake Chad," lectured Robinson, with a great show of knowledge.

"What language do they speak?" asked Thatcher Colt.

"Their own tribal dialect, of course— and a kind of pidgin French."

"Do none of them speak English?"

"Only Keblia— their witch doctor."

"Can he write English?"

"Beautifully. Keblia was educated In England."

"And where is Keblia now?"

"I don't know. He should be on the platform, but he seems to have disappeared."

I was relieved when we moved away, turning our back on these duck-billed negresses aux plateaux.

I had fallen a little behind. For some inexplicable reason, I had begun to feel nervous and jumpy. Although we were surrounded by jabbering crowds, moving in every direction, I had the uneasy impression that someone or something was following close upon our heels.

It seemed a silly suspicion and yet I could not resist turning and glancing over my shoulder. Then I stopped in my tracks. Not ten feet behind, a face was staring after us with a concentrated expression. It was a dark face, savage and full of scars, and with wild eyes rolling in deep sockets.

"Dougherty," I called, seizing the elbow of the District Attorney, "look at what is following us."

But when the District Attorney looked around, I felt very foolish, for the scarred lace of the black man had disappeared!