Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Originally written in 1956. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Harry Stephen Keeler. All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  DEDICATION

  Mr. Harry McEvoy,

  etc.,

  Nov 29, 1960.

  Dear Harry:

  I feel terribly frustrated that I cannot be giving you a book you have not had. But what can I do with a reader and collector who has bought direct from Ward Lock, London?

  Well Harry, I am so frustrated that I AM now going to give you a “book” that you have never read, and never can read in the English language. For the reasons set forth later. This is the manuscript you are looking for. It is a ribbon copy. It has just been published in Spain as Ladrones de Circus, while Hazel was dying. Its English title would be THE CIRCUS STEALERS. It is another yarn about Angus MacWhorter and his Biggest Little Circus on Earth. It has been bound by me in a sort of black paperoid binder sometime back, and has pasted to its title page part of the jacket of a book that appeared in Portugal, THE CASE OF THE CRAZY CORPSE, but which, being about the same circus, gave an adequate touch of color and design and circus atmosphere to the title page.

  Now the reason this will never be published in England or America, or anywhere else in the world for that matter is, or are:

  A. ’Tain’t got sex!

  B. YOU now have the ribbon copy, the only existent copy on earth, since the two carbons had to go to Spain, one for publisher to set and one for censors.

  C. It could never have rightfully been published here anyway, because it contains 3 chapters already covered by prior copyright. One is Hazel’s short-story of circus life, SPANGLES, which originally appeared in a Dell Pub. Co. magazine, and had appeared in this country and England in the book THE VANISHING GOLD TRUCK. Risk violation of Dutton (and Ward Lock’s) copyrights could ensue if issued in another book in U.S.A. or England, by another publisher.

  It also contains two chapters by me issued in other books. Viz, in the book published here by Phoenix, I think, called THE CASE OF THE JEWELED RAGPICKER (if wasn’t that, it was some other); and in England the book THE ACE OF SPADES MURDER, I believe. Again, this book could violate copyright in two different fields in two countries if issued in either or both.

  So now you see why you will never read it in the English tongue, except that you care to read it in the English tongue in the ms. you now own.

  I have signed the ms. The length of the ms. is reasonably short, 69,000 words.

  Well so heaven help me, you now, as a collector, have something no other collector has: a manuscript—not only that but an unpublished ms. so far as English language goes and one that never can be!

  Hope it reaches you okay, Harry.

  * * * *

  This story is by two writers who have collaborated on a number of books issued in England, one being Hazel Goodwin Keeler, author individually of a number of books, and Harry Stephen Keeler, author of 50 published British works.

  One chapter in the story, Number IX, entitled SPANGLES, is the conception of Hazel Goodwin Keeler, and was written by her alone.

  For the sake of unity in the writing, the remaining chapters are from the typewriter of Harry Stephen Keeler.

  CHAPTER I

  SECRET REPORT!

  Jules DiValo, Demon Illusionist of the MacWhorter’s Mammoth Motorized Shows, irritably rattled the receiver of the ancient wall-phone in the flyspecked glass booth in the town pharmacy at Pricetown, where the “Biggest Little-Circus on Earth” had arrived but three hours before.

  Troubledly, he wondered what kind of a weird combination of gobbledegook and carny-lingo he was going to have to spout, to the party he was about to call, in the latter’s hideout in another state, so that the town telephone girl here wouldn’t have what he, Jules, was going to say, all over the dam’ two-bit burg!

  He did not know, of course, that all this was going to be beautifully solved for him—that he was going to be able to render his highly confidential and secret report, to that certain party in that certain town, in that certain state—as freely as though the two of them were seated across a portable cocktail table on the Arctic Circle!

  It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon—at least, did one take an average of all the crazy clocks in this moth-eaten hamlet!—and it was at 3 o’clock, exactly, that the party he was now about to call would be eagerly, hungrily, greedily, waiting any last-minute inside facts Jules DiValo would be in a position to convey.

  But, troubled though he was, Jules had to grin sardonically, even diabolically, in line with his own professional name, as he thought of how his disconcerting report was going to land on the man he was about to call—like two tons of bricks!

  Poor Wolf Gladish! Owner of the Kollossal Kavalcade Travelling Circuses, Not Incorporated—and three in number. How—how would greedy, ruthless Wolf Gladish take it—to be coolly informed that his neat and cunning and perfect scheme to steal an entire circus, bag and baggage, performers, playing-dates, paraphernalia, equipment, costumes—and even show animals!—was not now going to run exactly—as it had seemed it was?

  Not, of course, that Wolf Gladish’s plan couldn’t yet go through—with certain artful alterations. Provided by that super-brain of all super-brains, Jules DiValo, Legerdemainist, who—

  And at thought of that fancy word for general shenaniging, Jules DiValo made satisfied remark to himself.

  “It’s good,” he said, “to be a perfect legerdemainist. Makes you smart—clever—artful—and resourceful—aye, resourceful!—against any and all setbacks. Makes you—why the hell doesn’t that lank, ugly-looking freckle-faced female with the big ears, who was pointed out to me earlier today as manning the phone-exchange in this town, answer the—why yes, My Sweet One, I am indeed waiting a connection—a long-distance connection across several states. Do you think your Charming Self could vouchsafe a sparse moment or so—to give it to me? And incidentally, Beautiful, what are you doing—tonight?”

  CHAPTER II

  ACROSS THREE STATES

  For a rural-sounding and twangy voice—that of a town girl-operator— had broken in on DiValo’s satisfied ruminations about himself. With the words:

  “Is somebody a-waitin’ fer a phone-c’nnection somew’ere?”

  Now getting his reply, she replied—though highly delightedly, presumably at being asked for a date by a visitor from the outside world.

  “I reckon I know who you are, Mister! You’re one o’ those p’formers with Mr. MacWhorter’s Circus, whut jist come into taown. Lordy, but he’s a swell guy, ain’t he? Puts in here ev’vy year. You’re lucky t’ work for sich a man—so kind to his he’p, an’ readin’ his Bible evv’y night atter the show, and—but ’bout dates, Mister, I cain’t make none, with drummers nor circus p’formers ’or nobody. Because I’m marrit. But I will git you your connection. An’ scuse me fer bein’ off the switchboard. They’s one hour here evv’y day when I git a work-break—yeah, a rest-per’od—it’s f’m 2:30 to 3:30, an’ nobody in taown don’t call nobody because there ain’t nobody kin git nobody. An’—howsomever, I come back fer to git m’ purse, so here I am—fer the moment—and who do you want?”

  Having this refugee from her stern duties by the forelock, so to speak, Jules lost no time in giving his order.

  “I’d call him later, My Sweet One,” he assured her, “only the man I’m calling is expecting my call at 3 o’clock—on the nose. So-o-o, get me at once, if you will, the following local number in the city of Hootens Falls, in the state beyond here—rather, beyond here across the corner of one intervening state!—named—but I guess you know your states and towns hereabout, not so? But get it at once, please, for the party I’m calling doesn’t live there—is only waiting there at a—a friend’s place—for my call. And—but the local number in question is 6—2—9.”

  “6—2—9? Hootens Falls? Yes, I und’stand. ’Twon’t take a minute. Because this taown’s the c’nnection center for all the taowns in this whole part o’ the country to get to th’ outside world, and Hootens Falls is the center by w’ich to reach the whole rest o’ the world. So-o-o—we have a direct line there, ’vailable all th’ time. Fact is,” she related almost proudly, “they bein’ aut’matic—well, if it’s a number right in Hootens Falls y’ want, instead of a fu’ther extension to the outside world, I can git it ’s easy as if ’twas here in Pricetown. ’Cept’n that—”

  She didn’t explain her exception to this most perfect setup for bridging
several hundreds of miles. At least, just now. So DiValo held the receiver patiently. Filling in the interim by gazing at his own reflection in the cracked mirror in the phone booth, and wondering grumpily how he would look, out with the town dowd! Seeing therein a fairishly yet-young man of about 35, clad in an impeccably cut but grey-pinstriped green suit, with gaudy-banded straw hat tipped back on blond head which matched blond mustaches waxed to sideshow platform perfection clear out to their needlelike points, and with, in his almost deadpan like flat face, steely-blue eyes that were cold as round icecubes. Belying completely the warm flowered Hawaiian pattern handkerchief peeping from his outer coat pocket.

  Grimacing in sheer horror at thought of himself out with the town dowd, he let his gaze in the mirror fall on what was behind him now. The interior of the dusty old pharmacy, with round glass jars on its shelves, its magazine rack, its elderly thin-haired proprietor puttering around in soiled alpaca coat.

  Swinging his eyes leftward to look through the booth wall and streetward, he grimaced also as he saw the town’s Main Street. A rutty wide dirt road, with 2-story hardware and feedstore across the way—and, out in front, a badly gnawed hitching rack, showing that the mule-power of the country was occasionally tethered there.

  Now came answer from the girl who’d come back to her waiting customer.

  “Here’s your party, City Man. It’ll be one dollar fo’ 3 minutes. And you drop half dollers, or quarters, in that there new-fangled slot d’vice what’s sticking out from the phone. Ev’ see one o’ them?”

  He grimaced sourly at this archaic device designed to take coins only from honest people.

  “Three minutes, Beautiful!” he echoed. “Heck, I’ve got to talk—all of 15. Say 20—to be safe. Call it 21—since you apparently deal only in units of 3! In fact, I’m jingling with—in short, I’m dripping at this second with half-dollars just for this purpose—so suppose I drop in 14, one by one. Okay?”

  “Good. An’ I’ll give you a twenty-second minute—fer a bonus. Reason I talk ’bout talkin’ time is because I got me up from the dentist’s chair to come back over here, and with him waitin’, drill in hand, to drill m’ tooth. What I mean is, I can’t ’rrange with Hootens Falls to cut you off—because, like I told you, the service is aut’matic for a local call from here to there—no, there ain’t no operator on the sarcuit there to cut in on you; so me, here, I’m goin’ to set the disc’nnector on the wire—it makes a slight hum, but it’ll cut you off deader’n a jackrabbit in 22 minutes. An’ save my skin from—d’ you mind?”

  “Not at all, Charming One,” he assured. “The conversational isolation will save me various linguistic acrobatics. And—besides, I’d be cutting myself off before that time. As even I can’t go on talking all day long. I am not quite yet, y’ know, Managing Overseer of a circus—with one hundred and fifty plunkoes salary a week.” He wondered if she realized what his “yet” meant. Knew however, she didn’t.

  He dug up his half dollars. Dropped them, one by one, in the proper slot. Heard each one tinkle melodiously and announce thus its amount.

  “Okey-dokey,” the girl said, as the 14th tinkle finally sounded. “Now when I swing your party on, I’ll swing the disc’nnector on, an’ git, lockin’ up this here switchboard cubbyhole behind me. Because my dentist he’ll skin me ’live if I leave him standin’ any longer with a drill in his hand and—ready?”

  “Yep—ready.”

  “Okay. Party? At Hootens Falls? Here’s your callin’ party. Okay, party at Pricetown. Here you are. Here you both are. ’Bye, an’ best o’ passin’ th’ time o’ day atween old friends.”

  A low almost musical humming sound came on the circuit. Followed almost immediately by the sound of the bang of a door, and then the creaking and groaning of an unoiled lock in it, that sounded like one on a death cell in some actual prison. And DiValo knew he was now facing, so to speak, and quite alone, a red-faced man of 56, with huge upturned half-grey mustaches and thin lips, who wore a purple derby with a rhinestone studded band for purely show purposes, and bore the name of Wolf Gladish.

  “Poor Wolfie!” he said, almost amused, but to himself only. “This—this is really going to be—good!”

  But aloud, he did not use any terms such as “Wolfie”. Certainly not when with a man who owned three circuses, and coveted a fourth. Since circuses were DiValo’s meat and bread. Aloud he said, respectfully and even a bit fearfully:

  “Are you there, Mr. Gladish? This is-You-Know-Who?”

  CHAPTER III

  THE CONSPIRATORS

  The man at the other end replied at once, and grumpily.

  “Of course I’m here. Why the hell wouldn’t I be? I’ve been squatting close to this damned phone since 2 o’clock, in case some kind of fool daylight savings time was in force there. And your call might come in an hour early. Well, what goes—in general? Pick up anything—new or interesting? And use carny lingo and oblique references only.”

  DiValo’s deadpan face creaked into a gelid grin.

  “Did I pick up anything?” he said. “I’ll say!”

  “Well it better be good,” retorted Gladish, almost warningly. As much as to say: “People who are expecting a hundred and fifty dollar a week job with a filched and stolen circus better bring only good news as to said projected theft.”

  It wasn’t good at all, however, what DiValo was going to have to say! But he prepared to give it. But gave first an explanation of why he was—and would be—talking freely and in straight English.

  “We won’t have to use carny-lingo and so forth, Mr. Gladish. We’re on an unmanned wire together right now. Yeah, a fact. The local-yokel—sex, female—who mans this board here at Pricetown is having a fang pierced at her local jawcracker’s. The hum you hear is the automatic disconnector. Set for 22 minutes from now. It’s not mullarky, because that bang you heard—and all that grinding—was the same local-yokel, sex female, locking up her precious broomcloset switchboard against people who might try, in her absence, to finoogle a free call to London or somewhere—

  “But atop of that,” DiValo assured his hearer even further, “I just saw her—monstrous galoot that she is!—coming flouncing hurriedly out from the hardware store across the stem here, swinging a handbag with more rhinestones in it than you have in that band in your katy, and—skip it. All of which means the switchboard is over that store. So-o—with Hootens Falls being automatic—as you would know, being there—and a trunk-line connecting Pricetown and your board—well, we’re alone now, you and I, in the Silence of the Stars. Hence, I’ll talk plain Angry-Saxophonist. And, at the 22nd minute from now, the conference goes deader than a pickled dodo. Since—”

  “Okay—okay—okay,” cut in the other man impatiently. “Twenty-two minutes—twenty-two seconds—all I want is your simple report that all is exactly as it was. So I can start back for Foleysburg by mare’s shank—get there by near midnight or what!—and wait—for the moment.”

  DiValo was quite frank in his comment to all this.

  “Well all isn’t as it was,” he said simply, and unsmilingly.

  “All isn’t—as it was?” ejaculated the man on the other end harshly. “What do you—”

  “Exactly,” said DiValo coolly. “The Old Man—Angus MacWhorter, Esquire, to you—knows the whole plot—conspiracy—whatever we want to call it.”

  “Knows—the whole scheme?” Wolf Gladish almost gasped. Then recovered himself. “Aw, nuts—you’ve been interpretating some o’ his cryptical allusions that usually refer to things in the Bible—not in showdom—you know how he—”

  “No, nothing interpreted or misinterpreted here, Mr. Gladish, for—well, he knows the whole plot.”

  “How—how in hell do you know he does? Did he tell you he did? Did—”

  “Be yourself! He’d never tell me anything. He never did like me, y’ know. No, he—”

  “We’ll come to that when we come to it,” snapped Gladish. “The main point is how you learned—that he knew. The point really is if he knows—and I don’t believe it fully yet—how did he learn, I’d like to know?”

  “Oh, that’s simple. His advance man, Ned Littlewood, plainly knew somebody in Foleysburg who was close to the Mayor, the Sheriff, or the S.A., to be in on the facts; for that party spilled to Ned—and he got the whole set-up. Wrote the facts to MacWhorter—not from Foleysburg, of course, where his letter might have been steamed open by a Post-Master—but from Hootens Falls, where you are now. MacWhorter got the letter on arrival at Pricetown. That, I hope, will satisfy you now as to what facts MacWhorter knows. For I spout facts, not hypotheses. I—”