Murder of the Circus Queen

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

PERHAPS then and there I should have reported to Thatcher Colt the threatening face that had seemed to be following us. But there was no immediate opportunity. The Commissioner was eager now to meet and size up those performers who had been threatened, and Colonel Robinson kept glancing at his watch, remarking that our time was very short, as he led us to a gate guarding the region of the performers' dressing-rooms― a barrier that we were soon to realise was a door from one kind of world into another.

Through the gate, our route lay mid a confused assembly of portable dressing rooms and booths, and mazes of costumed performers. Stretching beyond all this was a lane of make-up tables, at which sat scores of men, painting their faces in bright colours and comic designs.

"Clown Alley," explained Colonel Robinson, slowing up.

The phrase comes back to me now, a reproach to my own congenital stupidity. Yet how, was I to guess that here and now in Clown Alley, Thatcher Colt was to discover the decisive clue in a classic mystery?

"Clown Alley is where I started my own career," confessed Colonel Robinson, biting off another morsel of tobacco plug. "I was a clown acrobat and I could still earn my living that way if I had to."

The manager was standing at the foot of a broad concrete stairway; in a moment he was to lead us upstairs to the regions behind the amphitheatre, where the star acts, the high-salaried performers, had their dressing-rooms. Yet even here he made a delay while he tied the lacings of his left shoe.

"Did you happen to notice that every one of those clowns had a different make-up?" he asked Colt. "Once a Joey, as a clown calls himself, fixes up his face according to his own original design, then that design belongs to him and to nobody else. It's sort of unwritten law. No other Joey would think of copying it. You know Barnum once said clowns were pegs to hang circuses on. Well, the old boy wasn't so far wrong."

Years afterwards, I was to look back and remember Colonel Robinson as he stood at the foot of the concrete steps, pausing in a serious investigation to tie the lace of his left shoe. And Thatcher Colt was to remember the moment long before I.

It was seven-fifteen o'clock when we followed Colonel Robinson to the upper floor. To the eyes of an outsider, this part of the "back-yard" was a place of incredible chaos. The manager, smiling mysteriously, led us to a small dressing-room and knocked. While we waited, he explained that Flandrin, whom we were now to meet, had reached New York only half an hour before -barely in time to make the opening performance. He had been performing In Berlin during the winter and the ship on which he had returned was delayed by spring fogs.

"In fact," explained the Colonel, knocking again, "he got here so late that he had not had time to say 'hello' to his wife."

"She was not abroad with him then?" asked Colt.

"No. LaTour was on the West Coast all the winter, in vaudeville." Colonel Robin-son knocked a third time, much more loudly. This time there was a response.

A voice called out sharply and Colonel Robinson opened the door and led us In-side. Bending over a mirror, a man in green tights was plying a green grease-paint pencil across his throat in great strokes, stretching from ear to ear. At last we had come face to face with one of Colonel Robinson's threatened stars.

The face turned toward the door was grotesquely distorted by the clown make-up; enormous red lips, onion-shaped nose, and green cheeks and chin. Such a countenance was in shocking contrast to the graceful athletic body and the strikingly beautiful silk costume. While this performer made his entrance as a clown, he gradually discarded fur coat and baggy trousers, disclosing his tights, and finally managing also to wipe away his make-up while swinging on the high trapeze.

"Pardon, Flandrin!" called Colonel Robinson. "I would like to present you to Mr. Thatcher Colt, the Police Commissioner.''

There was something alert, feline, in the startled grace that animated Flandrin. With the ease and awareness of one of the big cats in the cages below, he turned and bowed.

"Flandrin," explained Colonel Robinson, trying rather ineptly to put all at ease, "is one of the highbrows of the circus. He was a post-graduate student chemist in Munich long before he ever thought of going into the show business. His wife thinks he knew as much about chemistry as any man in Germany. Acrobatics was only his hobby— he would have been working in a laboratory yet if he hadn't fallen in love."

With his painted and enormously exaggerated lips, Flandrin smiled vaguely and then looked over Robinson's head. Meanwhile Colt seemed to be paying no attention. His eyes drifted from one part of the dressing-room to another. I saw him lift a pencil with thick, soft, blue lead from the table, examine, it, and put it back in its place.

"Flandrin," went on the Colonel, "is married to one of the greatest women in the world. Yes, I mean Josie LaTour—"

"Who gets the biggest salary in the history of the business," chanted Dougherty.

"Sorry to intrude on the night of the big opening," interposed Thatcher Colt, "but Colonel Robinson says you received a mysterious and threatening letter-"

Flandrin wheeled half-way round with a soundless alacrity. From a suitcase on a chair he produced a folded piece of paper which he handed to Colt. The Commissioner read the note aloud:

"Be very careful what you do. Above all, do not try the double twist in New York. This is a friendly warning. The double twist will positively mean your death if you attempt it. You will die at the opening performance— and not in the way you expect."

THERE was no signature.

Without a word, Thatcher Colt passed the note to the heavy-breathing District Attorney. The paper was of the white wrapping paper variety, the kind used for bundling merchandise in drug stores. The letters of the message had been blocked in soft, blue pencil. All eyes were on the note in Dougherty's hand: I was the only spectator of what happened next. Colt was standing behind Flandrin; now the Commissioner spoke very softly:

"Are you going to do the double twist to-night?"

Flandrin did not answer at once. But m the silence I saw Colt's hand go back to the table, noiselessly lift the pencil of soft blue lead he had found there and put it in his pocket.

"Well, Flandrin," prodded the Commissioner, "why don't you answer?"

"I have yet to decide whether I shall do the double twist," replied Flandrin, with an aloof air. He spoke with a foreign accent, curiously tainted with the tang of the American street voice.

"Say, what on earth is a double twist, anyhow?" wheezed Dougherty.

Robinson promptly explained.

"Flandrin is talking about a trick, a combination of double somersault and twist, which every ambitious acrobat in the world would like to accomplish. All of them have failed, because it defies the known laws of gymnastics."

The acrobat in his green fleshings and preposterous make-up raised a deprecatory hand.

"Pardon me. I have managed on several occasions to perform the double twist," he corrected in a gentle and humourless voice "I am probably the first person ever to have done that. But I cannot do it as yet every time I try. It is dangerous, too— but I shall reduce that danger to nothing. It was LaTour who inspired me to try to master it. And she will continue to inspire me, until I have worked out the perfect routine. Then I can do the double twist whenever I want to All the credit will really belong to my wife, the great, the famous Josie LaTour. And if I decide to try it to-night, no threats of death can stop me!"

This singular harangue was delivered in a singsong voice, almost as if uttered in sleep.

"Noble sentiments," pronounced Colt, with a bland smile. "I have heard a great deal about the professional jealousy of husbands and wives in the theatre and the pictures. Evidently it doesn't exist in the circus."

Again Flandrin made his dancing-master bow.

"No, no— there can be no jealousy between a talented artist like myself and a genius like LaTour," was the grandiloquent reply.

"How will you decide whether or not to do your special trick?"

"The double twist? My wife will know that. I have not seen her as yet. I must ask her advice."

Colt's eyes narrowed; the acrobat was »rowing more and more annoyed at the questions.

"Where did you find this note?" inquired Colt, suddenly direct and sharp.

"It must have come in the mail to-day. I found it here, on the table, left there by Colonel Robinson who had received it from my wife. She opened it in my absence. Now. please, is there anything else?"

"Can you identify the handwriting?"

"No, no!"

"And you have no suspicions?'

"No, no, Mr. Colt. I am not of a suspicious nature. Probably just a crank letter. What is it you Americans say? I mind my own business."

"Before we go— can you tell me when you will decide whether or not to do the double twist?"

"When?"

"Yes— before the show starts, before you go into the ring, or—"

Flandrin shrugged.

"I will have only a minute with my wife, if that. Colonel Robinson has arranged a series of interviews with the reporters for me, in between my appearances in the arena. I doubt if I shall do it— I must talk with LaTour!"

IT was on this unresolved and puzzling reply that we left Flandrin, once more plying his green make-up pencil from ear to ear. Outside the dressing-room door, Colt reclaimed and gave to me the Flandrin note of warning. But he made no reference to the pencil. In the Crime Museum of the New York Police Academy, the letter may be seen today, mounted and glazed.

Colonel Robinson glanced at his watch.

"We must not linger," he cautioned, "because all the performers will have to appear in the opening spectacle."

As we started off, my head was beginning to seethe with questions. Had Colt believed the pencil on the dressing-room table was a clue to the note-writer? True, the quality and colour of lead were similar. But any clever criminal would be too careful to leave such damning evidence about. Yet Colt had abstracted the pencil. Had he noted any betraying characteristics in Flandrin's behaviour that made him suspicious? Meanwhile, the circus owner had brought us to another dressing-room door on which he rapped. A bass voice boomed an answer and presently we were shaking hands with a giant Mephistopheles, swaggering in red tights, cloak, and sword, tail and horns.

"Here, chief," cried Colonel Robinson, as if he were announcing to a vast audience "is the acknowledged king of the circus— Signor Sebastian!"

At this flamboyant introduction, Signor Sebastian threw back his head, struck out a long, waggling tongue, and twiddled his thumbs in his ears.

"Flatterer!" roared the King of the Air. patting two enormous palms resoundingly against his middle. "Ah, Mr Colt— you hear how Papa Robinson tries to keep in good humour his poor, underpaid artists?"

Though already past forty, Sebastian, like most aerial stars, was a strikingly handsome human animal. With his shock of reddish hair, bushy and wild, infernal mustachios, and hellish blue and yellow circles painted under his eyes, he radiated a spirit of confident wickedness. One felt he was, indeed, a ruler in his infernal realm. There were seven persons in Sebastian's set, including brothers, cousins, and two grown sons. But they were scattered in other dressing rooms: Sebastian, the King, dressed alone.

"You received a threatening note," Thatcher Colt smilingly reminded him. "May I see it?"

The painted face of the Mephistophelean

acrobat looked startled.