Report on Vanessa Hewstone Read online

  Thus things went on, such bewildering instances being found by my operative as the U vanishing from a wooden road-sign standing on a disused road off one side of the circus lot, a sign first reading “U-Turn ONLY, Here!” except that the “U” got sawed out of it by a hacksaw; in another case, the “U” was filched right out of a beautifully hand-lettered alphabet done by that young tent-erector who is travelling with your show, and practicing drafting on the side; while he was out of his trailer a few minutes, with the strip of bristol board carrying the hand-lettered alphabet laid out on his drawing board, on his trunk, someone came in, and removed—probably by safety razor blade?—the “U” right out of his alphabet—no other letter: he didn’t want to annoy you with the facts, but did show my operative the denuded alphabet. Again, a certain paper-covered copy of Fu Manchu, that had been knocking about the show till almost in tatters, was found finally on the ground with the “U” in Fu chopped out of its front cover; in another case, a whole board got removed from an old fence about a block off the lot, wherein each board had carried a single white-painted letter, the whole reading KEEP OUT UNDER PENALTY; after the show had been there but 4 hours, the particular board carrying the “U” vanished entirely. In one instance, a girl equestrienne wearing one of those Woolworth Stores silk scarfs known as the Mother Goose Rhyme scarfs, with, in some cases, a picture of Miss Moffett sitting on a tuffet, and two lines—“Little Miss Moffet”—yes, you’ve guessed it: the “U” in TUFFET was scissored out, at a time when she went on to do her act, and left her scarf hanging alongside the area arena-entrance. Thus, in general, these U-stealing episodes. Clear on up till the night when my operative, examining the chest of your dead clown Screamo in the town morgue, after two dozen and four or so of your outfit had called there, found fresh and extremely recent removal of a single square of skin, carrying the “U” in the three-color tattooed “SAUL”.

  That settled things for him! He would undoubtedly have taken it all up with you, but being called off the job by me because of his discovery about Screamo, he told all the circumstances to me—this morning.

  Now, my dear Mr. Circus Proprietor, inasmuch as this sort of crime lies in the field of compulsion—not motivation—it is more or less inevitable, I’d say—at least according to the findings of Doctors Radice and deStefano—that some fine night, when your tent is particularly full of people, including countless innocent children, this devil—or devilress—for it can be a woman, remember—will set fire to that tent, perhaps at many spots—and will create a holocaust slaughtering hundreds of innocents. Or even may, at such time, send one of your trailer groupings up in smoke.

  Consider yourself, therefore, sir, officially and legally warned, and notified about the situation at your show: the carbon of this letter, now in my desk safe, and the registry receipt for it, will constitute the legal evidence that you have been so notified. If anything happens, sir, full responsibility lies upon you, up to possibility of being tried for manslaughter.

  Apprehensively yours,

  D. Appleton Hepplegarth

  “We-ell,” said Hepplegarth, reaching the end of his long letter, “that’s—that! And discharges all responsibility—so far as this office goes. It won’t be difficult at all, I’d say, for that circus proprietor to rig up some damned ingenious trap—to catch that fellow. Even to checking—in case the trap remains unsprung!—the time it does, against the absences of various show people from off the show. And then saying ‘Eenie, meenie, miney, mo’ till he figures out the suspicious one. And once, just once, he can rivet guilt on one single person, he can put to ’em the damning question—”

  He was folding up his letter, as he talked, reaching forward then to the gilt clock on his desk, and abstracting out from under it a single long envelope that he had already prepared—all, that is, but for a single town name, and which he proceeded now to write in: Lantern Wave. And now he was blotting it, sealing his letter up in it, continuing to talk as he sealed.

  “—put to him the damning question: ‘A-a-all right, my fine U-stealing bucko—talk—and talk fast. Before you go into a warm, comfortable criminal insane asylum for the rest of your insane days. Why—why have you been putting on a consistent campaign, here in my show, to steal, purloin, and abstract, from words, names, and titles, by use of scissors, chisels, knives, and razor blades, the letter U—whether in brass, wood, cloth, paper, silk, or—or human skin—whether huge, medium-sized, or tiny—whether painted, stenciled, lithographed, printed, written, or handlettered—why? Why? Why?”

  He reached out sideways and depressed an inset button at the end of his desk, which would bring his secretary for the mailing of this hyper-important letter.

  “There’s only one tiny flaw in this whole affair,” he said, a bit dubiously. “And that’s that this—this U-purloiner may not be insane—may, for reasons completely unguessable, have a-a-all the answers! In which case—hm? Hm? Have a-all the ans—well all I can say is that I’d sure like to be around the night the $6400 question is hurled at that U-purloiner. And he has to lay ever’thing on the line—or—else! I sure would like to be present at the Big Scene—and how!”

  Book 2

  Lantern Wave, U.S.A.

  CHAPTER I

  Catastrophe!

  “This—this is catastrophe!” groaned Noah Quindry, owner and proprietor of Quindry’s World-Colossal Motorcade Circus, as he came to the bottom of the long letter he’d just received and read. “For with my grotesque horror of death on the show, if—if I don’t somehow uncover this—this U-stealing lunatic criminal, I’ll—I’ll just have to disband the entire show!”

  It was an hour after the close of the evening’s performance at the little town of Lantern Wave, and Noah Quindry, completely bald and plump and round as a great dumpling, sat in his office-trailer that ran behind his own living trailer, and from which the tickets were sold at showtime. His 58 years had not taken an ounce from his plump, circular face, or put crowsfeet into the corners of Noah’s brown eyes, for Life was ever fresh and interesting to him because of the sheer delightfulness and fascination of his business. Truly, his show was “World-Colossal” in the matter of its smallness—was a “motorcade”, only because 100 diverse lorries and trailers had all been painted to harmonize into one pattern of flame and chromatic flare—and was a “show” because of containing 100 “acts” and “features”.

  Noah himself was clad tonight, as he sat in his office-trailer, in the extremely loud, almost screamingly so, black-and-white checkered suit in which he always stood at the side of the entrance gate when the crowd came—and went. Saying, in first instance, “Go-o-ood evening, folks—welcome to our show!” and, in the latter, “Co-o-ome again, folks—next year!” He even had on, at this moment, the tall, square, crimson derby hat which had been made ’specially for him in England, the original home of Lord Derby’s type of headgear, matching exactly the flaming crimson cravat carrying within itself the 5-carat, very-yellow, very carbon-point-studded, very flaw-ridden diamond which could literally pour forth hot fire under the light of the gasoline torch. Against the wall, off from him a ways, even stood the rhinestone-studded stick, with the great rhinestone in its head, on which he always leaned when he bowed goodbye and farewell to his “customers.”

  He was now, however, folding up the letter he’d received by special delivery—or as the proprietor of the circus called it “by local yokel”, and just before the show was coming to a close tonight. Restoring it in its envelope in his breast pocket.

  “Yes,” he was repeating downright grimly to himself, “with my fierce horror of death on the show—or from it—or—or in it—I could never survive a wholesale—”

  He didn’t even say the word he had in mind, for a shiver went over his roly-poly self.

  The big office-trailer was a simple place, lighted up just now by a powerful brass oil-lamp in its ceiling, which, focusing down on the elaborate inlaid chopsuey restaurant stand
Noah had acquired somewhere, also illuminated the tall bookkeeping desk, with its two tall stools, and its clothbound ledgers and implements, at the end of the trailer in back of Noah, the iron safe riveted to the floor in the corner and leftwise facing him, the old-fashioned vertical drawer-cabinet, for filing data on playing points, and show-folks’ professional histories, along the wall frontwise right, and, had Noah just now turned his capacious head, the broad 8-foot ledge, with long zinc change trough under it, comprising—at least when the corrugated zinc curtain just now drawn down on the ledge, was rung up, and access given to the outside road where it faced, and the bracketed coal oil lamps focused on it, lighted—the ticket-selling window for the opening hour of the show.

  Noah, sitting back frowningly and worriedly in huge armchair made for a former fat woman in the show, realized that such a grave and decent warning as this he had just received must be answered. But answered—how? Yes, how? He even drew over the office-trailer’s “typewriter”—consisting of a bottle of Carter’s Jet-Black Ink, and a pen. And, from several loose foolscap sized sheets of pink paper, bearing the show-name printed at top of it, and lying partly under a rotated green blotter of same size, a single sheet. And uncorking the bottle, and dipping the pen, started to write. Ceasing finally only to read so much as he had written. And which was:

  D. Appleton Hepplegarth,

  F.B. C.P.

  Washington, D.C.

  Dear Sir:

  I appreciate greatly the confidential information you have just given me. You pose, for me, believe me, sir, a far deeper problem than you ever guess! For when it comes to death on the show—or in the show—or from the show—I am, I fear, almost a bit pathological myself. I simply can’t take such. I remember in one case—

  Here, Noah Quindry stopped writing. Sat back in his chair, gloomily thinking. Thinking back to the time, 8 years back, that Big Leo had gotten out of his cage because of the carelessness of some cage washer—and, during the few hours before he was captured by a tent crew with a steel net—mauled to death a Georgia cracker’s child. Oh, he’d sold Leo to a zoo quickly—for $5000—had gladly given the cracker’s family the money—yes, gladly. But as for himself—alas!—he’d had to go and have eleven shock-treatments at a sanitarium because of the depression the affair had caused. Again, when Tillie Fallenda, smelling strongly of gin but apparently as steady as a carpenter’s level, had insisted on doing her high-wire act, he had foolishly let her do it—minus net and all as it was featured to be—and she’d fallen. Breaking her fool neck. That time he’d had to go to another hospital—and have 3 more shock-treatments—to bring him out. Again, the time there was a small fire in the freakshow due to the fire-eater breathing out a vapor flame from his mouth that reached a nearby flimsy canvas drop; nobody’d been burned—not even singed!—nobody’d been even hurt—but two old women, trampled by the screaming crowd trying to get out. And one—had died! Died only, probably, because she was so old she would have died if even a swarm of gnats had trampled over her. But his appetite had gone after that happening—he did not eat for days—his fat face had fallen away—great pouches had hung where his belly was—he’d had finally to be fed by artificial proteins injected into his vein by the doctor in each town. Till he’d gotten strong—to be able to try and carry on again. Even—even in that one case where the tent-erector had fallen dead from over-exertion at raising the Big Top—after having put in a fake medical certificate as to having a “perfect heart”—this had so sickened and saddened Noah that he’d had to take three weeks off and go to Florida, where he’d sat all day glooming, looking out on the blue waves, wishing daily for his show, and wondering if the shock-machines were going to get him again.

  He sighed heavily.

  Bent his attention back to his letter. Went on writing:

  But I won’t bore you with personal reminiscences, sir, as to how I feel about death—on or in the show.

  Now about the grievous problem you pose me. Grievous because, unless I can solve it, I will definitely have to close and disband the show. The only legal way, furthermore, I can end the contracts. Yes, let all the people go. From highly important and advertised stunt artist down to the humblest of the peg drivers. Wait a few weeks. Advertise in the show-world trade journals. Perhaps get together a new crew—and a new set of acts—in 4 months or so, enough to go out again.

  However, sir—now that you have revealed all you have—there comes immediately to my mind, for puzzling myself, one chap on the show. It seems to me now—only seems to me, remember!—that when he and I have been walking about new towns, he’s been somewhat more than unusually interested—in old signs. Old signs, that is, on abandoned buildings. Out of date lithographs, and so forth. Heavens, I—I may only imagine it! It may have been some other factor in many of the signs, when he turns back often to gaze at—or does he?—rather than—well, if I’m right, it could be some other factor than its possessing of the letter U or—hm?—I fear my words here are but my own fantastic imaginings, I do!

  However, I do have right to be puzzled about his psychic self, for the simple reason that—well he is apparently, from all I can see, the reincarnation of a world-famous alleged criminal. In short, Robin Hood—of Sherwood Forest. England! At least—I thus bill him. His name is Mark Vasey. He does a bow and arrow shooting act for me—as you can surmise. And outside of that brief 5-minute-or-so act—with a certain pretty girl here helping in holding things, and placing them, and so forth—he functions as my all-round pinch-hitter doing anything that comes unexpectedly up—and helping in the ticket-selling where I have to have—must have—honest men only.

  Yes, he is so unerring with a bow and arrow that—

  But here came interruption to Noah Quindry’s troubled writing of his strange letter, in the form of a wheezy asthmatic tinkle. It was, of course, the phone for the trailer which sometimes got hooked into a town circuit—sometimes not—tonight was. He rose and went over to that bookkeeping desk in back where the phone stood. Took it over. Raised it.

  “Noah Quindry talking,” he said.

  Came a breezy answer. “Hi, Noah, I had a sort of hunch to ring you. Yes, all the way from N’Yawk here. And ask you if you’ve encountered aught along your cornfed route worthy of my Exhibit DeLuxe, my Exhibit Stupendous, my Exhibit Amazing, my—yes, this is Whipley—ol’ B’lieve-it-or-Not Whipley, himself.”

  Noah grimaced.

  “Well, how about it, Noah, ol’ Puff-Ball? An’thing—along that path in Hickdom you travel?”

  Noah grimaced again. Names called to himself mattered nothing to him—for he was, he realized, a human puff-ball. But comments about the intellectual quality of his audiences always hurt him.

  “Yes, Whipley,” he said quietly, “there is. One item. Encountered by us at our last stop. Gentryville. 50 miles back. I’m sure it would interest you greatly—if you could get it. It’s Ulysses—the Talking Dog!”

  CHAPTER II

  Concerning Ulysses

  The Great Whipley, who paid unheard-of prices for exhibits for his world-famous New York museum, gave throaty chuckle.

  “This,” he said, “is where Whipley is supposed to say: ‘This—I’ve got to hear about. Okay, Noah. Shoot?”

  “Well,” explained Noah, with a sour gleam in his eyes, “there’s not too much to tell you, Whipley. Ulysses is owned by—well, up to some time ago, he was owned by a wealthy man who retired to this little town to spend his declining days. Man named Hogate Winterhouse. He found Ulysses starving on his back doorstep one morning—a dog of so many patterns of coat that he must have been the son of all dogs in history. Took him in. Observed he was tremendously bright. And had a considerable number of cries and barks. And he taught him, anyway, over the course of years, to bark—or utter—22 distinct words. To, moreover, very concrete questions and objects. Showing thought, see?—thought?”

  “Ah me, yes, Noah. Thought! How I should like to show on
e thought, pickled in brine. As the topmost thing in—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Whipley. Well, this fellow Winterhouse had too much money and not enough brains, and had a dream one night that if he sunk a mine—or shaft—at some certain outlying point of his property, he’d uncover a huge diamond—”

  “Like the Kohinoor,” declared Whipley. “Part of my replica collect—”

  “Exactly. So, at terrific cost, he sunk this shaft. Called it the Talking Dog Mine. Sunk it plenty deep, too. The cost of his rigging, and engines, and cables, and elevator car, and all was plenty! And do you know what?”

  “Why of course. He found no diamond.”

  “Right.” And now Noah gave full return for being called a Human Puffball. “But he found a good place to bury Ulysses!”

  “Bury Ulysses?” echoed Whipley.

  And now Noah, having paid back, became the generous donor once more.

  “Yes. For Ulysses died. That’s why I hypothesized his particular use for you. Since you don’t go in for live exhibits, much. Yes, Hogate Winterhouse had Ulysses’ body embalmed by the new ionic process—so as to last for centuries. And he buried him at the bottom of his mile deep shaft. With a single stone plate over him reading just ‘Ulysses’. And to an old chap in the vicinity who has claustrophobia—”

  “Claustrophobia?”

  “Yes, claustrophobia. Gave him charge of the mine, and the privilege of running persons down into it from above, for $1 a trip. Automobile tourists going by often pay $1. The old fellow in charge picks up a fair bit of change. Which, with his pension, keeps him going. He runs the cage down for them—from above, that is—as far as it’ll go. After that, the intrepid voyager can lift the trapdoor in the bottom, and climb on down, via a steel ladder, and be at the bottom of the Talking Dog Mine! And the grave—of Ulysses, the Talking Dog. And—well now you have the story, Whip. If you but had the embalmed body of Ulysses—and, say, his burial plate—you’d have quite an exhibit, don’t you think?”