Case with 4 Clowns

by Bruce, Leo

  Anita gave a cry of dismay. “Our watchdog gone to sleep?” she said. “Why, we might all be murdered in our beds.”

  “Honestly, though,” I said quickly, taking advantage of the subject. “I feel very nervous about you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  I went on to tell her of the discussion which Beef and I had had about the possible murder, and the discovery that she had been present in both attempts so far. Anita seemed, however, unaffected by this.

  “I think that is just chance,” she said. “Why should anyone want to kill me?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I said grimly. “But the fact remains that you’re in possible danger. Personally I think you’re perfectly safe as long as you don’t appear in the ring. But as soon as you begin performing, I think—provided it is you who are in danger—that another attempt will be made.”

  Anita laughed. “Then you’ll have to come and watch very carefully,” she said. “So that if I am killed you will know who did it.”

  “Actually,” I said, with difficulty, “I’m much more concerned about keeping you out of this than I am with the Sergeant’s new case. I mean …” but the words would not come in consecutive order and I broke off.

  Anita’s eyes had a peculiar twinkle in them as she looked up at me. “I think,” she said gently, “that we’d better start walking back now. It’s time I was in bed, anyway.”

  I felt extremely foolish as we walked back to the tober, but Anita kept up a string of light remarks which served to cover my embarrassment. In my ears I seemed to hear Beef’s caustic comments on my “romantic nature” and squirmed inwardly at the thought of them.

  “Good night,” said Anita quietly as we reached her wagon. She spoke almost as if she were saying good-by to an invalid in a hospital, and pressing my hand quickly she ran up the steps and disappeared into the wagon.

  I felt that I could not bear to return to the wagon under the sceptical eyes of the Sergeant, so I walked over to the clowns’ wagon, which was, I knew, often used as a sort of meeting-place for the artists after the show. It was almost full of human beings, and with the minimum of fuss I was greeted, given a mug of beer, and settled in a corner. Next to me was Pete Daroga, who merely grunted a greeting at me and then seemed to retire into his thoughts.

  The conversation which was being tossed backwards and forwards across my head was mostly concerned with the show, and I soon lost interest and began to study Pete, who had taken a letter from his pocket and was studying it with concentration.

  Noticing my interest, he held the letter out to me with a grin. “It’s an invitation to join a European circus,” he said, with obvious enthusiasm. “It’s a big show that is touring the Soviet Union just now. I wrote to the manager at Leningrad, and he’s replied that they would be glad to have me next season.”

  The letter was typed in a language that I could not understand. In fact, the alphabet itself was beyond me, although many of the letters were similar to our own.

  “That’s Russian,” said Daroga. “Listen, I’ll translate it for you.”

  He held the sheet between us and read out in English while his finger followed the Russian words.

  “Comrade artist Daroga,” he translated, “the management committee have great pleasure …”

  But I did not hear the rest of the letter. The second word on the typescript sheet—the word which Pete had translated as “artist,” was written APTNCT, except that the center stroke of the N was written in the reverse direction to the usual English letter.

  As soon as I could I congratulated Peter Daroga and got away from the wagon. This was obviously the solution of the problem of the mysterious lettering on the button. I ran quickly to the wagon and shook Beef into consciousness.

  The Sergeant was not, at first, very enthusiastic.

  “You remember that button?” I said. “Well, I think I’ve found something out about it. Quick, where did you put your notebook? I want to see the letters you copied down.”

  “What are you shouting about?” demanded Beef. “You gone crackers, or something?”

  After a time I managed to impress upon him that I had important news, and he staggered out of bed and threw his overcoat round his shoulders.

  “Well,” he said doubtingly, “here it is. What’s the idea you’ve got?”

  “Look,” I said, pointing, “the N on this is backwards.”

  “Very interesting, I’m sure,” said Beef sarcastically. “I’m very pleased you woke me up to tell me. Now I suppose I can go back to bed.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Beef,” I said sharply. “Listen to what I’ve got to say. These letters aren’t English letters, they’re part of the Russian alphabet. They happen to be the same as ours, but they’re pronounced differently. You see, APTNCT is pronounced Arteest—Artist, see?”

  “Trust those Bolshevists to do something silly like that,” grumbled Beef. “But where does that get us?”

  “The point is,” I pointed out, “why was Jackson so excited about it? Why should he not want people to know he had a Russian button in his possession?”

  “Something to do with Daroga,” suggested the Sergeant. “He’s a Russian, isn’t he?”

  “But how does Jackson come into it?” I said.

  “Here,” said Beef suddenly, “I don’t like the look of this at all. I don’t want to be mixed up in no politics. Might be a Trotskyist or something. Perhaps they’re going to liquidate Jackson.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Beef,” I said. “This may lead to something.”

  “It may do,” said Beef. “But not till tomorrow it won’t. I’m going back to bed.”

  Obviously there was nothing to be got out of Beef until the next morning, so I, too, proceeded to undress and climb into my bunk. But somehow I could not sleep. The clock in the tower of Beverley Minster, just near the tober, sonorously marked off the half-hours one after the other, and I found myself waiting impatiently for it to strike again. At last I got out of bed, and throwing on an overcoat I walked out on to the tober.

  It had turned cold and the grass was like wet silver where the dew was on it. The air tingled in the back of my throat as if I had been eating peppermints. Not many hours ago I had stood on this spot struck by the contrast made by the white face of the Minster, and the white circus tent beneath it. The building had seemed flattened in the sunshine, leaning backwards like a cardboard cut-out as the clouds moved slowly away behind it. Men’s hands had placed stone on stone of a building which would stand for centuries, and not fifty yards away men’s hands had driven the iron pegs and pulled on the ropes of something which they themselves would undo just as carefully in a few hours’ time. In the afternoon sunshine the tent had shone as whitely as the Minster.

  Now, as the bells chimed away the time with something of triumph in their tone, the Minster was alone in the moonlight, and where the circus tent had been was a dark open patch across which one or two of the horses moved, grazing as they went.

  There was nothing of sacrilege in bringing them together, these two. If anything, the contrast gave each back some of its old meaning. It would be difficult to prove the debt which the clowning in the sawdust ring owed to the old miracle plays which had been performed probably in the shadow of this very Minster. Religion and drama, though they went their separate ways, could neither of them be cut out of people’s lives, and the pitching of the tent under the very eaves of the Minster seemed to me something of acknowledgment.

  I shivered suddenly. The camp was completely asleep and the only sounds were the faint munchings from the grazing animals. The wagons looked small and remote in the clear white light of the moon. And I wondered in how many of those wagons the tenants were asleep.

  CHAPTER XX

  April 30th.

  AS SOON as the new tober had been reached next morning, and the tents set up, Beef and I strolled round to attempt to see Gypsy Margot. We found her sitting in her little tent laying out the peculiar paraphernalia of
her trade, mumbling indistinctly to herself all the time.

  “Good morning,” said Beef pleasantly. “I wonder if we could have another little talk with you. That is, of course, if you’re not too busy.”

  The old woman looked up at us suspiciously without anwering.

  “I said,” began Beef in a considerably louder voice, “I wonder if we could …”

  “All right, I’m not deaf,” said old Margot sharply. “You don’t need to shout at me.”

  Beef took a seat and leaned towards her. “You’ve been with the circus a long time,” he said in what I had learned was his “humoring” voice.

  “What if I have?” demanded the old woman truculently.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean anything,” said Beef pacifically. “I was just making a statement, that’s all.”

  “Well, if you didn’t mean anything,” said Margot, “why do you trouble to say it?”

  Beef looked abashed, and it was some seconds before he was able to return to the attack.

  “Now, there’s nothing to be gained by you getting cross with us,” he said, as if admonishing a small boy who was playing with a loaded gun. “We only came in a friendly way, like.”

  The old gypsy sank back into her chair and folded her arms. Her bright eyes flicked quickly from Beef to myself as if assessing the forces which were against her.

  “What do you want to know?” she demanded at last.

  “You joined this circus just after the war—that’s right, isn’t it?” asked Beef.

  The old woman snorted. “A good deal before that, young man,” she said.

  “Then perhaps you were with the original show before Jackson took it over? Perhaps you were with it in nineteen-hundred and nine, when Jackson’s father started it?”

  “It started in nineteen-nine,” she stated. “But it wasn’t Jackson’s father. This circus belonged to my brother, and Jackson bought it off him when he was too ill to carry on by himself. You don’t think Jackson would let me hang around the gates unless it was in the contract, do you?”

  “Well, that’s certainly news to us,” I said.

  “Who was Jackson’s father?” asked Beef. “Was he in the show then, or something?”

  “By the look of him,” said the old woman sourly, “I shouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t got a father. Anyway, I’ve never seen him.”

  Beef pulled out his notebook. “You don’t mind if I make a few notes, do you?” he asked.

  “Anything but take my finger-prints,” said the old woman grimly.

  It struck me as I listened to this interview that the old gypsy woman was showing far more intelligence and coherence than she had done in our previous interview. At that time I had thought she was mad, but now I began to wonder whether that might not have been simulated in order to avoid giving us information.

  “What’s this about Christophe and Suzanne using your tent in the evenings?” asked Beef suddenly, and the question seemed to take the old woman off her guard. She looked accusingly at me before she spoke, but I avoided her glance and looked as innocently as I could at the ground.

  “I suppose that stupid young man told you,” she said, and I felt that she was glaring at me. “But there is so much of which you know nothing that the stars would still count you ignorant.”

  “Never mind about the stars,” said Beef. “How long has it been going on?”

  “Perhaps a year, perhaps a day,” said the old woman. “When love has entered a man’s heart he takes little count of ticking wheels and the numbers on the sheets of a calendar. His clock is then the green of the hedges and the soft feathered heads of the dandelion.”

  “Did anybody else but you know about it?” asked Beef.

  “The measurement of a man’s foolishness,” said Margot, looking venomously at me, “is often the number of times he opens his mouth to no useful purpose.”

  “So he didn’t tell anybody?” said Beef. “Not even Paul? Didn’t he tell his own brother?”

  “There were days,” said the old gypsy vaguely, “long gone now, when Christophe was as a mother to his brother. In those days when the bed of sickness was tighter around them than the bindweed around the stem of a young ash sapling, Paul grew to learn his own weakness. He learned that there would never be a day when he could live without his brother’s constant presence. And because he has understood that lesson well, he might do much to follow it.”

  “You mean, to keep Christophe away from Suzanne?” I asked, but Margot merely shrugged her shoulders and refused to answer.

  “And what about this affair Suzanne had with Len Waterman?” demanded Beef.

  It struck me that this question was unexpected. The old woman did not answer immediately, but drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders, plucking nervously at the tasseled fringe. “These things pass,” she said at last in a low, almost inaudible voice. “You think no less of the summer’s warmth because an east wind blew there in the winter. The mistakes of a schoolboy are no criticism of the man he will one day become. So it is with a woman, perhaps. It is best to remember only the warm wind and the sun, the small darting lizard disturbed by your foot, and the dry brittle rock under your hand, which seems to have known no other. In its day the ice was powerful enough no doubt, but it has no claim on the future. The cold dead hand of the past is nowhere so strong as when warm living minds recreate it.”

  I felt once again that there was something in this old woman which defied one to classify her as a charlatan. If she were trying to elude Beef’s questionings, she was doing so in a way far cleverer than her ragged clothes and appearance would suggest. There was something like beauty in her speech, even if she meant it to bewilder us.

  “I can’t say as I can follow all of that,” said Beef with honesty, “but at any rate I think I know what you’re driving at.”

  “Some men,” said the gypsy condescendingly, “hide the baseness of their metal under the red sheen of gold. But it cracks and shrivels in the strong sun and they are discovered. But you need not fear, for though the powerful beams pierce you through and other men pretend to detect a flaw in order to divert attention from their shortcomings, yet finally they will shrink when they find you are so much more than you pretend to be, while they themselves are only so much less.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, I must say,” said Beef and I thought he looked slightly embarrassed by this speech.

  “I think there’s little more we can learn,” I interrupted them coldly. “Don’t you think it would be better if we got on with some real work?”

  “Like all city men,” said Margot, and her voice had taken that peculiar droning quality which I remembered from the last meeting we had had with her. “Like all city men, you are in too much of a hurry. You should watch your footsteps. You should watch behind and before like a man walking in the snow who can only tell by looking behind how deep the snow is getting around him. You must not leap ahead without cry or warning, or you will bring more trouble than you cure. Be less rash, young men, and you will succeed.”

  Beef’s mouth was slightly open, and he looked startled. “Here,” he said, “wait a minute. I believe you know something.”

  The old woman went on as if she had not heard the interruption.

  “There is a day already chosen,” she went on, “on which that which you seek will come about. When men are happy, and the curled paper of their happiness litters the grass; when their cries are louder and less self-watching; that is the time to look for death. For it lurks in the twisted shell of happiness and endeavor; the brightest flame casts the blackest shadow. Even the moon is dark on the farther side. On that day will occur that which you set out to find. You may not both see it, but be assured it will happen. I only warn you not to be too precipitate in your lack of knowledge. It will fall into your hands in its own good time and the scarce-dried blood of a murdered person will turn to a golden crown.”

  “What do you mean by all that?” asked Beef, as soon as he could get a word in.
>
  The old gypsy seemed to grow taller, and pointing a thin bony hand through the tent flap, said:

  “I have spoken. Go, young man, and be cautious.”

  “She’s been reading too many Wild West stories,” was Beef’s comment as soon as we had left the tent. “Why, she was speaking like Big Chief Sitting Cow or something.”

  “I wonder if there’s anything in it?” I said thoughtfully.

  “Of course there is,” said Beef. “It means that none of what she tells us is much good. Because if we got her in a witness-box to swear to it and she talked like that to the judge her evidence would be dismissed.”

  “But she seems to know something,” I persisted.

  “She knows a thing or two all right,” agreed Beef. “But you have to take all she says with a grain of salt. I think she’s crackers. But you ought to ask Anita next time you take her for a little walk, and see if her mother’s all there.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  April 30th (continued).

  AS WE left Gypsy Margot’s tent we noticed a small group talking animatedly by the gate. Ginger, and Tug the hunchback, were talking to a small shabby man whom I had not seen before. Ginger waved us over towards them, and said, as we approached:

  “Here you are. This is the man you want.”

  The stranger turned his attention to Beef and touched his cap briefly with one finger.

  “ ’Morning, sir,” he mumbled. “I heard word that you might be needing an elephant man here, so I come along to see if you would give me the job. I’ve been with Jill’s for a couple of seasons, and before that I was with Twanger’s, and I’ve done some of the larger tenting shows like Josaire’s and Mott’s and …”

  Beef looked with amazement at the man. “I think there must be some mistake,” he said heavily. “Who was it you thought I was?”

  The man turned to Ginger for support. “I was told you was the boss,” he said. “Please give me a job, guv’nor.”

  I could see that Ginger was trying very hard to suppress laughter and realized that this was his way of playing a joke on my friend. Beef, however, was not in a mood to perceive the joke, for he turned to the man with some concern.