I said: “Come on, then. We have to climb.”
I pushed Iris up and she scrambled over the bars. It was more difficult to maneuver Mr. Catt, but I managed. Then I vaulted up myself.
Throughout the entire proceedings, Edwina retained her composure. She was too old and too wise to concern herself aobut the unorthodox behavior of a naval lieutenant and a girl and a bearded gentleman.
The three of us stood a moment outside the stall, confronting each other. Iris’s silver-fox wrap and the Beard’s carnation didn’t go with the dust and the hay. I didn’t look exactly G.I. myself. But I didn’t mind. We were free at last.
The pendulum had swung our way again.
CHAPTER XV
A glance at my watch sobered me somewhat. It was almost four-thirty. The circus had already been under way for an hour and a half. The time cue for the Bird Ballet must be perilously near.
“Come on,” I said. “This has got to be quick.”
We all three started to scurry past the elephants towards the arch which led backstage to the dressing rooms and Zelide’s wedding celebration. A couple of nondescript men, presumably the valets of the elephants, were loitering in a corner. They stared but were not curious enough to follow us.
We ran through the arch. Ahead was the performers’ entrance to the ring. Out in the arena, the band was blaring a martial air. People were milling around the entrance in a confused crowd. We elbowed forward. Iris wormed her way ahead of me. Suddenly she swung round, clutching my arm and pointing over heads towards the actual arena.
“Look, Peter,” she gasped.
At the very mouth of the arena, near enough almost to touch and yet infinitely inaccessible, I saw a serried rank of feathered blondes marching out into the red, white and blue sawdust. They progressed in military rhythm to the pounding of the band. A rumble of applause rose to greet them. And, moving grandiosely at their head, was a single, even more feathered blonde.
Madame Zelide herself.
We were too late by the fraction of a minute.
The world famous Bird Ballet was on its way out for the dazzling finale of the circus’s gala opening.
I stared hopelessly. The pendulum had swung back. Then I saw something else that set my blood racing with despair.
Leaping, running, tumbling and dancing around the bevy of aerialists were two clowns.
A red and white clown and a blue and white clown.
“The Roses,” I cried.
Recklessly I barged through the hangers-on to the brink of the arena. Iris and Mr. Catt battled after me.
“Zelide!” I shouted to the colorful parade. “Madame Zelide.”
Arms grabbed me instantly from behind and pulled me back. The group of stagehands had closed in on Iris and Mr. Catt, too. One of them said to me: “Buddy, are you nuts? There’s a show on. You can’t get out there.”
I tugged myself free. “But I’ve got to get to Madame Zelide. We’ve got to stop the act.”
The men were crowding around us.
“You can’t stop the act, bud. Surely you got enough sense to see that.”
“But Madame Zelide—she’s in terrible danger,” said Iris.
I could see the procession moving closer and closer to the centre of the ring. I could see the tangle of trapeze ropes hanging from the vault of the ceiling and the tall pink platforms which were to be part of the Bird Ballet. The band went on with a boom of tubas. And the two clowns, turning sensational handsprings, were weaving in and out of the aerialists.
Iris and Mr. Catt were arguing with the stagehands. They were getting nowhere. Everything they said only convinced their listeners that we were harmless lunatics. The men had regrouped themselves so that they made a solid wedge between us and the entrance to the arena. It was no use. By the time we explained, it would be too late.
I saw what we had to do.
“O.K.,” I called to the men. “Sorry we bothered you. Forget it.”
I grabbed Iris by one arm and Mr. Catt by the other.
“We’ve got ringside seats. That’s our only chance. Get down to the ringside and then over the barrier into the ring.”
“Of course,” said Iris, panting. “Come on, Mr. Catt.”
With the stagehands smirking incredulously, we turned tail and started to run back to the animal pens. We passed the elephants, the bored caged animals, and the sidehows where the tallest man and the fat lady and the tattooed lady and the snake lady, all refreshed by Zelide’s wedding celebration wine, were preparing to cope with the custom that would soon be inundating their booths. As we ran up the stairs which led to the audience entrances to the Stadium, I pulled the tickets out of my pocket. We only had two. But there was nothing we could do about that.
We tumbled into the first aisle we reached. No one was at the entrance checking tickets. We started down through the audience.
The Stadium was enormous, with thousands of people jammed into crowded tiers. The noise they made was deafening, and that vast oval seemed nothing but a white sea of faces.
In the ring below, the trapezes were being lowered from the nest of ropes above. The band had finished its march and was sliding into a honeyed version of “Chiribiribin.” The feathered blondes, taking little tripping steps, fanned out to their individual trapezes. In the very center of the ring, beneath a slowly descending pink trapeze, was Madame Zelide herself, monumentally pink, bowing and kissing her hand to the crowd.
But it was the clowns who kept my attention riveted. They were both swarming up guide ropes which flopped down from the ceiling on either side of Zelide. They climbed with the agility of monkeys, gibbering and making faces at the audience as they climbed. I saw the ringmaster who stood to one side, resplendent in his top hat and tails. He was gazing up at the clowns as if he had not expected them in the act. After a moment, however, he looked away. Obviously the crowd was approving of the clowns; obviously, too, the ringmaster supposed either that Zelide herself had added them to the Bird Ballet or that, with the license extended to clowns, they were merely putting on an extemporary show which heightened the effect.
We hurried through the audience towards the ring. I didn’t know exactly what we were going to do any more than I knew exactly what the Rose brothers were going to do. I only knew that the danger was extreme and that somehow Zelide had to be warned.
Suddenly, as I passed one particular row, I felt my arm seized. I swung round and with a sinking heart found myself staring straight into the watery eyes of Cecil Grey. The actor who had driven me to Lina’s the night before was sitting on the extreme end of a bench. His hand was still on my arm and there was nothing friendly about his grip. There was nothing friendly about his expression either. He had clearly read the afternoon papers and was quivering all over with the excitement of a righteous citizen about to expose a double murderer.
Iris and Mr. Catt had gone on ahead. If I stopped to explain to Cecil Grey—what could I say? On the other hand, if I broke away from him, he would certainly rush for the nearest policeman and give chase.
After a moment’s indecision, it occurred to me that the time had come when a couple of policemen would be very handy. It would mean my certain arrest, and Hatch would probably have had a far better idea. But Hatch wasn’t there and we needed help. I tugged my arm from Grey’s grasp and sent him slumping sideways against his neighbor.
As I clattered away down the aisle after Iris and Mr. Catt, I heard Grey’s actorish voice crying: “Quick. Quick. That’s Lieutenant Duluth. The man wanted in the murder case. Quick.”
A mild commotion broke out behind me. I didn’t care. In the ring the subsidiary aerialists had all jumped up onto their trapezes. To the lilting strains of “Chiribiribin,” they were slowly ascending, swinging their pink-sheathed legs coquettishly. But, with a mastery of suspense, Madame Zelide herself was still on the ground, bowing in front of her capacious pink trapeze.
The two clowns had climbed now to the very vault of the Stadium. Absorbed with what was going
on below, the crowd had no more interest in them. They were in full view of thousands of people, and yet they were virtually unobserved. I felt grudging admiration for their brazenness.
But what were they going to do?
The commotion behind me was growing more ominous. Iris and Mr. Catt were at the foot of the aisle, clutching the rail that separated them from the ring and staring upwards. I joined them. As I did so, Iris gave a little cry.
“Peter, up there … something flashed in the spotlight. The red clown has a knife.”
That, then, was the Roses’ plan. They were going to cut through part of one of Zelide’s trapeze ropes. They wouldn’t completely sever the threads. Nothing as crude as that. They would merely weaken the strands so that once Madame Zelide was hanging high above the sawdust and swinging through her aerial pirouettes the rope would gradually fray and eventually send her crashing to an “accidental” death.
Suddenly “Chiribiribin” broke off, giving way to a stirring drum roll. Madame Zelide blew a final kiss to her public and, reaching upwards for the ropes, sprang daintily onto the trapeze.
Iris’s fingers on my arm tightened. “Look, Peter. They’ve done it. They’re swarming down the ropes. They’re going to slip away before it happens.”
I looked up. The two clowns were sliding down the guide ropes towards the ground. In a few minutes, the Roses would be safe out of the ring, safe out of the circus, safe on their way to a hideout which they had almost certainly prepared by now.
The clamor from the audience behind us was gathering strength. I glanced over my shoulder to see Cecil Grey and two policemen lumbering down the aisle.
This, if ever, was the moment.
“Tallyho,” I said. “View halloo.”
I jumped over the barrier and down on to the sawdust of the ring. Iris came tumbling after me. With unexpected dexterity, Mr. Emmanuel Catt vaulted down to join us.
Shouts and screams rose behind us. The buzz of curiosity and alarm swelled to an uproar. From all corners. of the ring, attendants, horrified at the sight of trespassers in the arena, were closing in on us. Dimly I saw that the two clowns had almost reached the earth.
The drum roll still went on. Ahead of us, in the center of the ring, Madame Zelide sat on her pink trapeze, rising slowly, inexorably to her doom.
Emmanuel Catt, putting on a superb burst of speed, passed me and plunged towards the trapeze—a bearded Jupiter with the fleetness of Mercury. Iris and I dashed in pursuit. Pandemonium had the Stadium in its grip. The two clowns jumped from the ropes and started gamboling and somersaulting inconspicuously towards the exit. The ringmaster, flourishing his whip, was bearing down on us.
It was Mr. Emmanuel Catt who reached the trapeze first. Zelide was dangling now above our heads. Her pink, muscular legs were swinging. Although she was staring down at the Beard in stark amazement, her lips were still stretched in a broad, professional smile.
The ringmaster raised his whip. I threw myself at him. At the same instant, Mr. Catt crouched like a massive, bearded pard and hurled himself upwards. It was a mad, March Hare moment. I saw his large hands grab Zelide’s ankles. The ringmaster and I were locked in a fierce embrace.
And then, in a farcical heap, America’s foremost criminologist and the world-famous Madame Zelide tumbled together into the red, white, and blue sawdust at our feet—an inextricable confusion of blonde hair, black beard, and pink tights.
Attendants and policemen were surrounding us. The ringmaster was struggling ineffectually in my arms. The chaos that was Emmanuel Catt and Madame Zelide squirmed in the patriotic sawdust.
But I felt nothing but triumph. I still had only the shadowiest notion of what everything was about, but I didn’t mind.
Impossibly comic and sensational as the climax had become, we had won. There was to be no backward swing of the pendulum this time.
Against all odds, we had saved Madame Zelide Rose Annapoppaulos at last.
CHAPTER XVI
From that moment on, so many things happened at once that the memory of them is confused. Someone was blaring through the public-address system in a futile attempt to quench the flaming excitement of the audience. The ringmaster broke away from me, threw one despairing glance at his star aerialist writhing in the sawdust, and grabbed a microphone that must have connected with some headquarters backstage. Above the general clamor, I heard him moaning into the mike: “Bring the elephants. Quick. The act is ruined. Bring something for the crowd to look at. The elephants.”
Zelide, gabbling indignantly, was stumbling to her feet. Mr. Catt was getting up, too. People were pressing around, shouting and jostling each other. Iris and I were forgotten. No one seemed to remember exactly who had started what. I stretched on tiptoe, staring over the bobbing heads. I could just catch a glimpse of the two clowns making their unobtrusive way against the stream of people towards the exit.
“Those clowns!” I shouted. “Get them. Get after those clowns.”
No one paid any attention. I was just someone else shouting. With Iris behind me, I started to beat my way through the mob. I had gone a few paces when a hand settled on my shoulder and swung me around. Two policemen were standing there with Cecil Grey dramatically at their side.
“That’s the man,” the actor was saying. “That’s Lieutenant Duluth.” He pointed at Iris. “And that’s bis wife.”
The second policeman took Iris’s arm. Both officials looked dazed. The one who had me by the shoulder muttered: “Lieutenant Duluth, you’re under arrest.”
In the midst of that bedlam, the remark sounded on the anticlimactic side.
“O.K., Officer,” I said. “I’ll go with you. But there’s something you’ve got to do first.”
I swept into an incoherent rush of words about the two clowns, pointing and gesticulating. Iris joined me.
In feverish counterpoint with our voices, I could hear Emmanuel Catt nearby booming down Madame Zelide’s incensed Italian.
“ … Madame, I am deeply sorry to spoil your performance … but you must listen to me. … The Roses, I say … Ludwig and Bruno … they are here … they were going to murder you …”
The audience was still seething. The public-address system was still blaring.
“The Roses!” echoed Zelide sharply.
“Yes, yes,” came Mr. Catt again, warring with my passionate plea to the policeman. “They are here, I say. Those clowns. Didn’t you receive my warning flowers? Haven’t you read in the paper that Eulalia and Lina are dead?”
“Dead!” screamed Madame Zelide. “I see the flowers, yes. But I read no papers. Eulalia and Lina—dead. Oh, oh, so it ees true. It…”
She broke off. One second later she had rushed up to my policeman, her blonde curls awry, her feathered tights spattered with sawdust.
“Queeck, queeck,” she said panting. “Those clowns. Murderers. After the clowns. Murderers. Roses.”
Between us, Madame Zelide and I had reduced the policemen to a state of almost imbecile confusion. While they stuttered at the aerialist, I seized my opportunity and broke away through the crowd, rushing after the fast-disappearing figures of the two clowns.
That action of mine shattered the spell. To a man, the random throng around Madame Zelide’s trapeze began to tumble in pursuit. At first, I think, they were chasing me. But soon Madame Zelide herself caught up to me. Her tights were wrinkled; her blonde hair streamed out behind her. But she was as formidable as the Spirit of Liberty leading a revolutionary mob and she was shouting, like some lunatic Victory slogan: “Clowns. Murderers. Roses. Clowns. Murderers. Roses.”
From then on, Zelide and I were the acknowledged leaders of the troop. Mr. Catt and Iris stumbled to join us. I don’t think any of the others knew what they were chasing, but mob hysteria carried them forward and they too began to shout in meaningless echo of Zelide: “Clowns. Murderers. Roses.”
The audience went completely crazy then. I didn’t blame them. They had come to see a circus. Now they had a demented t
rack race on their hands. The roar from the packed tiers surged over us like a titanic wave.
Ahead, the clowns had almost reached the exit from the arena. A little knot of people was grouped around the gap in the rail, watching our approach. They did not seem to connect the clowns with anything. I yelled my lungs out to them to stop the clowns, but the din was so great that I could scarcely hear my own voice.
The clowns reached the exit and ducked through the watchers out of sight backstage. Zelide, the Beard, Iris, and I surged forward at the head of our cohorts. Zelide and I arrived at the exit simultaneously.
Zelide, her eyes ablaze, grabbed the nearest man.
“The clowns. Queeck. Which way they go?”
“Clowns?” echoed the man. Understanding dawning, he turned and pointed down the corridor towards the elephant pens. “You mean that couple of clowns? Just went down there.”
“Thees way!” screamed Zelide, beckoning over her shoulder. “Thees way. Queeck.”
We started down the passage. The others pressed behind, crammed together as close as herrings in a can. I knew that at least one of the Rose brothers had a gun. I knew they would be as dangerous to meet up with as trapped tigers. But the crowd pushing us on was beyond anyone’s control.
The passage took a turn to the right. Zelide and I were hurtled toward the corner. We reached it. And, as we did so, sounds of tumult even greater than those behind us suddenly roared from the passage ahead. There were gigantic crashings and prancings and the hoarse cries of men. But one sound soared above all the rest. It was a jungle noise unbridled enough to chill the blood in the warmest veins. I recognized it at once.
It was the furious trumpeting of an elephant.
With the others pounding behind, Zelide and I shot around the corner. I shall never forget the sight which confronted us.
The Rose brothers were there, all right. They stood at the end of the passage with their clowns’ backs to us. They stood perfectly still, staring at what was in front of them.
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