Case with 4 Clowns (16 page)

Everybody else stopped their own affairs immediately to crowd round and watch. A rough ring was made, and shouts of encouragement urged on one or other of the fighters.

“They're like a lot of babies,” said Beef to me. “Like quarreling over a rattle, that's what it is. Silly, I call it. I'm going to put a stop to it.”

And almost before he had finished speaking he was
shouldering his way through the ring as only a policeman knows how.

“Here,” he said, grabbing each of them by the shoulder, “have a bit of sense. Enough's as good as a feast.”

The two men looked at each other a little sheepishly, but Len Waterman did not look at all pleased that they had been interrupted.

“Oh, you mind your own business,” he said, and twisting himself from Beef's grasp he walked quickly out of the ring and started off back to the tober. There was silence for a moment, and then the men started putting themselves tidy, and following Len's example.

“And mind,” shouted Kurt as a parting shot to the remnants of the enemy. “Mind you keep your posters in your own village in future.”

The leader of the other side shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Maybe,” he said quietly.

“What did you say?” roared Kurt pugnaciously.

“Maybe,” came the answer again.

For a moment it looked as though the fight might recommence there and then, but Pete Daroga pulled impatiently at Kurt's sleeve.

“Come on,” he said, “we haven't got much time to wash up before the afternoon show.” And slightly battered, the little group continued on its way back to the tober.

“Cor,” said Beef, catching up with me, “that was a Do, all right, wasn't it?”

I thought it was probably the wrong time to tell him about his carelessness in the matter of placing blows, and so kept silent.

April 28th (continued).

W
HEN
we reached the tober we discovered that it was already almost time for the afternoon performance, and Jackson was raging up and down in front of his wagon.

“Where the hell have you all been?” he demanded, as the little group came through the gate. “Hurry up and get that muck off your faces and get changed for the show. There's only ten minutes or so to go.”

Actually, the queue had scarcely begun to form in front of the pay-box, but no one cared about pointing out his exaggeration. In the circumstances it was probably justified.

“I like that,” said Ginger, when we were out of earshot of the proprietor. “We go out and risk life and limb for the honor of his circus, and then he turns on us for being a few minutes late. Gratitude for you!”

“Don't you kid yourself, my lad,” commented Beef. “You were out for a scrap and nothing more.”

But there was little discussion now. All the enmities were immediately forgotten, and the artists and hands alike hurried off to get ready in time for the performance.

Anita joined Beef and me as we were strolling round the ground.

“You don't mind if I stroll with you?” she asked, and placed her hand through my arm.

“I'm still a little weak,” she said, as if in explanation. And then, as a further gesture to respectability, she gave her other arm to the Sergeant, who responded with a huge boyish smile.

“Like coming home from church,” he stated, “all quiet and respectable to a Sunday's dinner.”

Anita laughed and squeezed my arm. I wondered if she
had also squeezed Beef's at the same time, but finding the thought a little unworthy of me I said:

“How soon do you expect to be back in the show again?”

“Only a few days now, I think,” she replied. “There was nothing very serious after all, only a flesh wound. It's practically healed up already. It's mostly nerves that are the matter now. I feel frightened sometimes—especially at night—and for no reason at all.”

“Frightened of who?” asked Beef.

“Of nobody. I can't explain it really. Although sometimes the way Hel …” She paused for a moment, and then concluded quickly: “The way Helen speaks I believe she is frightened as well.”

I caught Beef's eye over the top of the girl's head and realized that he had found something suspicious in this statement. Anita had not noticed our exchange of glances. She was looking ahead with a preoccupied expression on her face.

“The trouble is,” I said, “you brood too much on it.”

“Oh no,” she said quickly, “it's not that. I'm still a little upset, that's all.” Then, hurrying on quickly, as if to prevent us returning to the subject: “You know Cora Frances is coming down to the circus tomorrow. She's coming to stay for a week or two.”

“Not
the
Cora Frances?” I said in surprise. “You mean Cora Frances, the painter? The one who does those immense portraits and groups, where the people look as if they daren't move or they'll be shot?”

“That's right,” Anita laughed. “She's just ‘discovered' the circus and she's gone crazy about it. I told you we had all sorts of writers and artists staying with us sometimes. Now you'll be able to meet the great Cora Frances.”

“It makes me feel a little nervous,” I admitted. “What's she like anyway?”

“Oh, she's rather sweet really,” said Anita. “You'll see when she comes.” And we had to be satisfied with that.

One or two visitors, mostly children, were wandering inquisitively around the ground. The largest group were by the entrance to the Wild Animal Zoo, attempting to peer in past the canvas screen which had been drawn across the entrance. Beef and Anita and I walked slowly over towards the enclosure, and then slipping in under the canvas at the back, we surveyed the caged animals.

The only other occupants of the zoo were Ginger, who was fixing the ropes across the front of the cages, and Kurt and Ansell, who appeared to be having something of an argument.

“I said, it's a fine time to tell anyone,” we heard Kurt shout at the animal-feeder.

Ansell shrugged his shoulders and turned away towards the cages.

“Well, go on. Get it done now,” insisted Kurt. “We can't have the people coming in here with the tiger's cage in a mess like that. Get some of the chavvies outside to bring the tunnel in.”

Still in silence, Ansell disappeared outside, and Kurt came over to us.

“Lazy good-for-nothing jail-bird,” he mumbled. “Can't even be relied on to do the simplest of jobs. You have to keep your boot near his backside all the time.”

Ansell reappeared as he was saying this, pulling the lion-tunnel by the shafts and assisted by half a dozen or so children, who were pushing with a will. He dragged the tunnel over towards the tiger's cage, maneuvring it until it was in a direct line with the door. He worked slowly, and apparently oblivious of the fact that we were watching. Kurt made no move to help, but stood beside us with his hands in his pockets. Ansell placed blocks under the wheels of the tunnel, to prevent it rolling back away from the cage. Then he
opened the door of the tiger's cage, while Ginger, crouching on top of the tunnel, held the trap, ready to drop it into position directly the tiger was in the tunnel. The tiger refused to move.

Kurt picked up a stick and walking quickly forward, rattled it across the bars of the cage as a boy does a hoop-stick on the railings. The tiger snarled, and then slowly slunk through the door into the tunnel. Ginger quickly let the trap fall into place.

“One of these days,” he commented cheerfully, as he leaped to the ground, “I shall catch his tail with that trap. Then he'll just about blow that tunnel to pieces. It rocks every time anybody leans on it now.”

Ansell had climbed into the back of the tiger's cage and was sweeping out the old bedding and manure. After watching him for a moment, Anita drew our attention to the other cages.

“Why do you have all those lions?” asked Beef, when we were opposite the three-partioned lions' cage.

“Those two,” said Anita pointing, “are only half-grown. George is still training them. He wants to use them for a mixed turn later, if we can get hold of some wolves and bears. Then these three are the three you see in the ring every day. A lion and two lionesses. And this other chap,” Anita moved alone to the last cage. “Well, I don't quite know what he's doing here at all. We picked him up cheap some time ago, and George started training him, but then the cubs came and so George started working on them and rather neglected this fellow. What are you going to do with him, George?” she called out to Kurt, who was at the far side of the enclosure.

“I don't know,” answered the lion-tamer. “Hadn't really thought much about it, to tell you the truth. I might give it to the Sergeant as a Christmas present.”

Beef chuckled. “Wouldn't half give the missus a shock if
I walked home with that on a lead,” he said. “Why she created bad enough when I brought a little dog home once, when we was first married. Wouldn't have no beasts about the house, she said. Bad enough having me, I suppose.” And Beef gave vent to one of his hurricane-like laughs.

As if in reaction from the sudden noise, Anita gripped hard on my arm.

“Look,” she said, almost inaudibly. As she spoke there was a sudden crash as the tiger's cage-door was slammed, and I looked up in time to see the scared white face of Ansell behind the bars. At the same moment the lion-tunnel gave a slight lurch and rolled a yard or more into the center of the enclosure. There was a sudden yell from Ginger, and the striped form of the tiger slipped down between the cage and the tunnel and crouched on the ground beneath the axle.

Then I had a sudden mixed and confused impression of many things happening at once. Anita's hold tightened on my arm and I drew her behind me with some vague and heroic idea of protecting her; Kurt shouted, and Beef said the one word, “Cor.”

The tiger crept forward until it lay just under the tail-board of the tunnel, looking out at us. Its tail was waving slowly from side to side, and twitching jerkily at the tip, like a bad-tempered household cat.

“Keep still, everybody,” said Kurt calmly. “Keep perfectly still.” And then, looking up at the animal-feeder in the cage, he said quickly: “Come out of that cage, Ansell. And leave the door open.

Peter Ansell showed his teeth in a frightened grin. “Not on your sweet life,” he said. “I'm safe behind these bars, and here I'm going to stay.”

“Come out of it, you blasted fool,” roared Kurt in sudden anger. “Get out the back way and be quick about it.”

These words seemed to have their effect upon the man, for
he slowly opened the front door of the cage, and then retreated quickly backwards and disappeared through the door at the rear. Kurt waited a moment, and then took two paces towards the crouching tiger.

“Up,” he said harshly, and pointed with his outstretched arm to the open door of the cage. The tiger snarled, turning its head sideways in a worried, irritated way. For a moment the two stood there, almost statuesque. There seemed to be no sound or movement anywhere, and I had become completely oblivious of everything but that grim set-piece in front of me. Kurt, coatless and without any means of defense should the animal spring, and the tiger hesitating, a low growling snarl coming from between its open jaws.

Then it turned its eyes away from the man standing over it and carefully, almost contemptuously, began to lick one of its fore-paws. Kurt stood silent and motionless. And then, at last, the tiger moved. Almost casually, it rose from under the tunnel, hesitated, looking once more at the lion-trainer, and then leaped lightly through the open door of the cage.

As Kurt closed the door on it I became suddenly aware once more of my surroundings. In relaxing my grip around Anita, I realized how tightly I must have been grasping her shoulders. She was trembling violently, and her lips were grayish-green.

Beef blew out his mustache noisily. “Cor,” he said for the second time, “that gave me a bit of a turn.” He looked across at Kurt, and then at me. “I don't know about you two,” he continued, “but I could do with a drop of something after that.”

“So could I,” said a hoarse voice behind him, and Ginger crawled guiltily from under the monkey cage.

“I'll follow you down,” I said, “after I've taken Anita back to her wagon.”

“See you down there, then,” said Beef. And without another word the three men walked shakily out of the enclosure.

Anita, however, seemed the least shaken of us all. She seemed too impressed with Kurt's handling of the animal to feel any reactions of fear.

“You know,” she said, “that tiger has never been trained. I've never seen anything like it in my life.”

“It was a very unpleasant situation, though,” I said, and then remembering that she had grasped me for protection, I went on: “Except, of course, that …”

“Except that nobody was hurt,” said Anita quickly. I thought there was a very definite twinkle in her eye as she ran quickly up the steps of her wagon and left me.

As Beef had promised, I discovered the three men in the public bar of the nearest local. Peter Ansell had joined them—or had reached there before them, I'm not sure which—and the conversation had turned to animal escapes of previous years.

“You have to get them back into the cage as quickly as possible,” Kurt was saying. “Or some blithering fool comes along with a shot-gun. Then all you've got left is a tiger-skin hearth-rug. I had that happen to me once. Tame as a kitten, it was—a lion I had ever since it was a cub. But somehow it got loose from the cage, and up comes this yokel with his blunderbuss, and before I had time to do anything he'd pulled the trigger and run for his life.”

“But wasn't there any danger at all, really?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, in this case, yes,” said Kurt. “You see, that tiger had never been trained. So in a manner of speaking, it was a bit of luck that he went back into the cage without any trouble. Yes, in this case, I should say we were lucky to get away with all our legs and arms in one piece.”