Death of Anton

by Alan Melville

  “Don’t you mind him, sir,” said Lars Peterson. “It’s just him being friendly. Wants to kiss you. He’s taken quite a fancy to you, sir.”

  The rest of the party laughed loudly. Robert did not think it at all funny, and not very sanitary into the bargain.

  The big dressing-tent had been rigged out for Dodo’s supper-party with two long trestle tables, and a strong scent of sausages hung over the place, mixed—rather disturbingly—with a smell of horse from the stables near by. Mr. Minto, Claire, and Claire’s young man sat at the top of one of the tables, beside the host and Joe Carey. Robert, poor soul, had been separated from them in some way, and was hemmed in between Horace and Miss St. Clair at the far end of the other table. Miss St. Clair had never had supper with a clergyman before, and was determined to make the most of the experience. Between her questions and Horace’s friendliness, Robert had not a happy evening.

  The rest of the company, however, appeared to be in the best of spirits. It was a tradition in Carey’s that, whenever anyone threw a party, all who came were to come dressed in their circus garb, and not in the drab, ordinary costume of everyday life. So Dodo, in the host’s place at the head of the table, still wore his harlequinade suit of yellow-and-red checked silk and his ridiculous little bowler hat, and had not taken off his make-up—the pure white face, with the nose and lips showing up in enormous blotches of brilliant crimson. Mr. Carey was in the glory of full evening-dress with two diamond studs in his shirt which seemed a little too large and a little too brilliant to be diamonds—but which were. Lorimer and Loretta, still in their neat white tights, were probably the only comfortable people in the heat of that July night; and poor Miss St. Clair, buttoned up tightly in the uniform of the French Legionnaires which she wore in the ring, was perspiring freely. Beside these people, Mr. Minto and his guests looked dull and commonplace in their ordinary clothes…though Father Robert might easily have been mistaken for one of the clowns.

  The bangers arrived, heaped high on two enormous ashets. Claire had not believed there were so many sausages in captivity, and said so. Mr. Carey made a bad joke about missing links, and laughed for a long time at it. Young Mr. Briggs even grew conversational, and when asked if he were enjoying the bangers, replied, “They’re grand.” Mr. Minto could hardly believe his ears, having expected the sausages to be described as “not bad”.

  The conversation whirled round to Anton, Mr. Minto having asked why he was not present at the party.

  “Er…Anton?” said Dodo. “He’s a bit shaky tonight. The tigers haven’t been behaving themselves lately.”

  “I didn’t notice anything,” said Claire. “He seemed to have them under his thumb all right tonight.”

  “That’s how it looks to you, miss. You don’t know exactly how far they’re supposed to go, and how much is performance and how much the real thing. This afternoon it was more real thing than performance; tonight it was about half and half…and even half and half isn’t comfortable with seven tigers. I expect he’s gone straight back to the hotel. He wouldn’t feel like a party.”

  “Did you ask him, Dodo?” said Lorimer.

  “No,” said the clown, and left it at that.

  Mr. Carey smiled and began to pick his teeth.

  “I’ll tell you why Anton isn’t here,” said a loud voice down the table. “Stuck-up, that’s what he is. Thinks he’s a damned sight too good for the rest of us. That lad’s head is swollen that much it’s a wonder he can get it inside the cage. He’s heading for a fall one of these days—and it mayn’t be them cats that does it.”

  The man who had spoken was so vehement about it that there was a fairly lengthy pause after his remarks, ended by Dodo calling for more bangers and a further supply of beer all round.

  “That fellow who spoke just now is Miller,” said Dodo. “He hates the very sight of Anton.”

  “Why?”

  “He used to be with him—in the act. When they joined the circus there were two of them. Anton and Leon. Miller was Leon. They went into the cage together, and the big thing about their act was that one of them would be doing one trick with half the animals at the same time as the other one was doing something else with the rest of them. And that takes a bit of doing, I can tell you. Anton was always the star, mind you, and after a while this fellow Miller began to lift the elbow a bit too much.”

  “Not a thing one would advise in an animal trainer, eh?”

  “No. Anton stuck it for a couple of months and then pitched him out. He didn’t want the fellow to go to the dogs, so he got round Joe here to give him a job in the circus.”

  “Soft—that’s me,” said Mr. Carey. “It’ll be the ruin of me yet.”

  “Now Miller’s one of the ringside men—hoists the nets and ropes, clears the ring, holds up the hoops, and all that sort of thing. A bit of a come-down from being part of a top-of-the-bill turn, but he’s lucky to be doing anything.”

  “If it wasn’t for me ’e’d be walking the streets,” said Mr. Carey. “Proper soft-’earted, that’s what I am.”

  “He’s never forgiven Anton for turning him out—especially as Anton improved the act a lot after he left, and it’s better now than ever it was.”

  Mr. Minto drained his tankard and peered down the table to see what the man Miller looked like. But, having shot his bolt, the man had gone. Mr. Minto got no more than a glimpse of his back as he pushed aside the flap of the tent door and went out.

  Joe Carey brought out his watch with a flourish—a massive gold watch, with an inscription on the back which said something about the watch being a small token of appreciation for long years of faithful service. Mr. Carey had been meaning to get the name on the inscription altered for years now, for the long years of faithful service were not his. He had, in fact, picked up the watch second-hand for a few shillings at a travelling fair. He made a brief calculation, and said: “I’ll be back in a minute, Dodo. Got a bit o’ business to attend to. ’Scuse me, all—keep some beer for me.”

  Dodo, watching him go, smiled and went on with his sausage. Mr. Minto was more interested in Lorimer, who was in the middle of a long anecdote about an occasion in Budapest when Loretta had let him down badly—“but we used a net in those days, so it was all right”—when Joe Carey left the tent. Lorimer also watched him go, and brought his story to a quick conclusion. Less than five minutes after the proprietor had gone, Lorimer had muttered an excuse and followed him through the flap of the tent. At the head of the table, Dodo looked puzzled and drew his hand thoughtfully across his face. The red of his lips smeared and turned his mouth into a shapeless outline.

  At the foot of the other table, Miss St. Clair was discussing marriage with Robert.

  “I was married in the tent. The first time, that is. We got a sky-pilot—a proper one, just like you. The whole circus turned out, animals and all. And just when I was going to say ‘I do’, or ‘Oke’, or whatever it is, one of the elephants got fed up with the ceremony and ran amok. My dear, you should have seen it! Took us a quarter of an hour to get him quietened down and—Lars, darling…I wish you’d take that beast of yours away…he keeps on slobbering over the priest here whenever I’m telling him anything.”

  “It’s all right. He said he didn’t mind it.”

  “Who—the priest? Did you say you didn’t mind it, Father?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s just the animal’s little—”

  “Okay. Where was I? Oh, yes. Took us a quarter of an hour to get the elephant quietened down, and by that time he’d smashed up the bandstand and sat down on the altar we’d rigged up. Horace, let him alone, will you? Go and lick someone else.”

  “It’s just his good nature,” said Mr. Peterson from the other side of the table. “Isn’t it, Horace? There you are, you see…kissing him, to show how much he likes him. Taken quite a fancy to you, sir.”

  “So I notice,” said Robert, drying his
ear.

  “And,” said Miss St. Clair, “when we did get the elephant quietened down, we found that the sky-pilot had gone off home. So I don’t really know to this day whether I was properly knotted or not.”

  “Most embarrassing,” said Robert, pushing Horace’s snout off his shoulder.

  “It wasn’t, really. It came in very useful later on. I found out he had some very awkward habits—the man I married, I mean, not the elephant—and I told him that as the marriage hadn’t been finished I could leave him just when I liked.”

  “And did you?”

  “I certainly did. Lars, give it some fish and stop it fussing like this, will you? I certainly did, mister. And then I met Musclo. He was a strong man with a travelling show. Bent me double, just like he did his iron bars. We got married at a registrar’s office, without elephants. Sometimes I feel it was a mistake not having elephants. Because, a few months after that hitch-up…”

  Claire Minto, at the other end of the tent, was discussing trapeze work with Loretta.

  “How did you start?” asked Claire. “Did you begin by doing a few easy tricks on the bars of your cot?”

  “I hadn’t a cot,” said Loretta. “I was born just outside a circus tent—between performances. My mother had sense enough for that. I was carried about on her back until I could walk. I started by breaking my leg when I was five, and I’ve never done anything else but trapeze stuff ever since.”

  “Ronnie and I are going to take it up, you know. Oh, this is Ronnie…my fiancé. We made up our minds as soon as we saw your act tonight. It’ll give us something to do in the long winter evenings…and I’d love to see Ronnie in the sort of tights your husband wears.”

  Mr. Briggs did his clucking noises again.

  “One of these days,” said Claire solemnly, “you’ll lay something—and that’ll give you a shock all right.…Can you learn it by a correspondence course, Loretta? Or Dodo, could you—”

  But Claire, turning to ask Dodo if there was any chance of her fiancé and herself being allowed to join the circus, found that her host had vanished. On the other side of the empty seat, Mr. Minto was talking horses to a foreign gentleman who made twenty-five Arab steeds stand on their hind legs and beg for sugar lumps.

  “Ought we to be going?” said Claire. “Everyone seems to be disappearing—including mine host.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Loretta. “They keep on drifting in and out, but these parties usually go on till four in the morning. Good lord!”

  Loretta’s “Good lord!” was caused by a roar, or series of roars, so loud that they seemed to Claire to come from immediately behind her seat. Father Robert, on hearing the noise, leaped off his seat and began to look for his hat. Horace started to bark huskily. Everyone laughed.

  “That’s the tigers,” said Loretta. “Anton’s tigers. Their cage is just behind this tent. It’s queer—they’re usually as good as gold at nights. Never make a sound. But they’re certainly letting us know they’re awake tonight. Just listen to them…”

  The party stopped chattering and listened. The roars increased in volume. Peter had started the din on his own; now it was taken up by the other six, in various degrees of strength according to their ages. Nor was it the usual roaring, either the demand for food or the snarl of rebellion which came from them whenever they entered the ring. This was the real thing…angry and furious.

  “I know what it is,” said Miss St. Clair. “They’re peeved because they haven’t been asked to the party. Couldn’t we have them in to finish up the sausages?”

  Robert, appalled at the idea of having to sit beside seven tigers as well as an intelligent but slobbering sea-lion, did his best to catch Claire’s eye and signal to her that it was high time they were getting home.

  “They’re probably planning what they’re going to do to Anton tomorrow,” said the man who trained the Arab steeds. “They’ve been getting a little difficult lately—maybe you noticed it tonight? I think Anton is getting rather—”

  The flap of the tent door flew open. Dodo stood in the doorway. He said two words only.

  “Oh, God…”

  The tenseness of the moment was heightened by the fact that Dodo could show no expression on his face. The white mask, the two scarlet patches of nose and mouth, gave away nothing at all.

  “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

  “They’ve got him…the tigers…”

  The party rushed out of the tent and over the grass to the tigers’ cage. A table was overturned in the scramble to get through the tent’s narrow opening. Robert cantered after the others, some lengths behind, and left the tent occupied only by Horace the sea-lion, who climbed down from his seat and flopped on his belly and barked and barked. Horace, being an intelligent beast, knew perfectly well what had happened without having to rush about wildly like these other people.

  The crowd ran round to the cage and stopped suddenly. The night was moonlit; every detail of the unpleasant scene was shown up clearly. Peter, the largest of the tigers, was crouched in the far corner of the cage, his throat raised to heaven and roaring as only Peter could roar. The two other older beasts stood in front of him, helping him nobly with the din. The cubs paced up and down along the side of the cage furthest from the crowd. They were scared and trembling.

  On the floor of the cage lay the body of a man, red with blood. The legs of his trousers were ripped into tatters; the blood oozed out from a wound in the right leg.

  “Anton…” said Loretta. “They got him at last.…”

  Chapter Seven

  It seemed to Mr. Minto a little hard. If an overworked Det.-Insp. (for that abbreviation was the official way of describing Mr. Minto) couldn’t take a week’s holiday from Scotland Yard in order to get his only sister safely married—if he couldn’t do that without being confronted by a corpse—then Mr. Minto didn’t know what things were coming to. His first thought was to have nothing to do with the business at all. He would murmur his sympathies and regrets to all concerned, take Claire’s arm and lead her and her fiancé and Robert away from the scene of Anton’s death, and forget the entire affair. Mr. Minto, however, had a nose for blood. He thrived on it, and when a particularly bloody corpse was placed invitingly in front of him, it would have taken several discharges of dynamite to remove him from the spot marked with the cross—without first looking into the matter. Mr. Minto, still staring at the unpleasant sight of Anton lying in the cage, could not help remembering what Dodo had said at breakfast that morning.

  “Carey’s is a hot-bed of crime…”

  The fact that Anton had been set upon and mauled by his tigers had, of course, nothing to do with that statement. Or had it? Mr. Minto heard a confused babel of orders being given all around him, and realized that some unfortunate person was being handed out the job of removing Anton’s body from the cage. It was not a job that he himself would have volunteered for right away. The surprising thing was that it was accomplished with the greatest of ease. The door of the cage was opened gingerly, while two attendants stood by with revolvers raised. A modern Daniel (with the exception that it was a tigers’ den, and not a lions’ den, that he was entering) stepped cautiously inside the cage, put his hands under Anton’s shoulders and dragged him slowly out. He laid the body on the grass and wiped blood from his hands with a dirty handkerchief.

  This piece of work had been carried through in complete silence. The group of Dodo’s supper-guests stood some little distance away from the cage, with mouths wide open and standing very still. They made a grotesque picture in the moonlight…the acrobats, the bare-back riders, the clowns still in their circus costumes…a few, like Claire and Mr. Minto, in evening-dress…Robert, a study in black and white, with clerical garb and a very pale face…and a crowd of the circus attendants and workmen in shirt-sleeves, or half-naked, having tumbled out of bed and pulled on their trousers on hearing the
rumpus.

  It was the silence that impressed Mr. Minto. The chattering of the human beings had died away while Anton was being lifted out of the cage and laid on the grass, and the seven tigers watched the body of their trainer being dragged inch by inch away from them without uttering the smallest snarl of protest. Even Horace, left behind in the tent where the party was being held, had given up his barking…having found a supply of fish which had up to then been kept a secret.

  Mr. Minto had watched the tigers very carefully as Anton’s body was being taken out of the cage. The cubs were obviously scared. They crouched back against the bars at the far side of the cage, and their bodies trembled. What seemed much more interesting to Mr. Minto was the fact that the three older beasts were also frightened. Mr. Minto had had little or no experience of tiger-mauling, but he imagined that any tiger who had half-mauled a man would be worked up into a state of considerable excitement over it. It didn’t seem right to Mr. Minto that Peter, for example, who had probably done most of the damage, should have nothing to say when the door of the cage opened and a comparative stranger crept in and dragged away the body lying on the floor. If all the stories which were told about Peter were true, he ought to have had something to say about it, instead of being so very relieved (or so it seemed to Mr. Minto) when Anton’s body was out of the cage and the door clanged between it and the tigers. Queer, thought Mr. Minto. But then he knew very little of the ways of tigers.