Return to Harry Stephen Keeler Page
A COPY OF BEOWULF
Chapter I
MYSTERY!
The elderly owner and proprietor of the Biggest Little-Circus on Earth, touring America’s great Southwest, did not realize, as he sat in his personal trailer, a full hour after the close of the evening’s show, how rapt and puzzled he was as he gazed at the opened-out yellow telegram on his knee.
For the message-portion of the telegram—and which was from the town physician in the last town played—plainly written with no thought whatsoever of expense, since it was punctuated, and illuminated perfectly by the light from the powerful brass coal-oil lamp in the trailer’s ceiling above, ran:
AWFULLY SORRY THAT AN EMERGENCY OPERATION CALLING ME OUT INTO THE COUNTRY LAST NIGHT PREVENTED MY TALKING WITH YOU PERSONALLY BEFORE CIRCUS PULL-OUT HOUR. BUT, REPORTING HEREWITH CONCERNING YOUR “SPOT-GIRL”, ONE MELODEE ASHBROOKE, WHOM YOU SENT TO ME TO LOOK OVER, I WILL SAY THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HER PHYSICALLY. THE PSYCHOMETER DOES SHOW, HOWEVER, THAT SHE IS SUFFERING A DEEP AND VERY RECENTLY-CAUSED DEPRESSION OF PROFOUND AND INTENSE NATURE. SHE WILL NOT CONVEY THE SLIGHTEST HINT, HOWEVER, OF WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: AND I WILL VENTURE THAT UNLESS SHE WILL PERSONALLY VOLUNTEER TO TELL YOU, YOU WILL NEVER SUCCEED IN PRYING A WORD OUT OF HER AS TO WHAT IT IS ABOUT. SORRY I CANNOT BE MORE ILLUMINATING. ALL GOOD WISHES.
CALLISTUS EMORY, M.D.
ADAMSTOWN
“Strange!” muttered the circus-proprietor. “Yes, strange what could have hit the girl so suddenly—right while travelling here with the show, and in complete protection of it and me? It’s—it’s inexplicable—it’s weird—it’s bizarre!”
And there was a deep irony in the last word of the circus-proprietor that even he could not see! For he was himself, at this moment, a most bizarre figure, to say the least!
For he was still in his ringmaster’s costume—he always handled, himself, the bareback riding act which just preceded the finale—the act which National Broadcasting Company had recently asked to show on television for $150, in a pro-gram to be called “Nostalgia”. And had, of course, been politely refused. With his tall silk hat even now absent-mindedly atop his long-faced head with its high grey-touched sideburns, and with his long-tailed black swallowtail coat, he looked like nothing so much as a great gaunt time-ridden crow of some sort. Particularly so under the brilliant light emanating from the powerful brass oil lamp in the trailer ceiling, which, focussing down on the small portable folding table just now carrying his brassbound, Morocco-bound Bible which he read each night, and lighting up the few scant additional pieces of ascetic furniture the trailer contained, including the black coverlidded bunk at the end, brought out the sad and brooding countenance of the circus-proprietor, the seams in his great face.
And it was right here that a knock came on the door of the trailer. The lotside door, that is, set almost midwise in the trailer’s side, and facing a similar door set in the opposite wall. The particular door, in fact, looking more or less toward him. It was a most dejected knock, the knock was. A timid knock. A feminine knock!
And Angus MacWhorter, proprietor and owner of “The Biggest Little-Circus on Earth” stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“That—that could be her,” he said. “Since I did send for her. Though it could be any number of other performers, too. Since—but if it is she—and if I’m very kind and all to her—and don’t try to third-degree her in any way—maybe I can solve this confounded mystery. Maybe!”
And hastily he stowed away into his breast pocket the wire concerning “Melodee Ashbrooke, spot-girl.”
Turned briskly to exactly face the door where the so-timid knock had come.
“Come in?” he called kindly and warmly. “Come in?”