The Shadow - 279 - Freak Show Murders by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1944-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

DURING the next four days the Sorber Greater Shows played to better business, which was a help, though not the sort Steve Kilroy wanted. He was looking forward to a stand like Hilldale where it would be obvious that some crooked business was afoot since otherwise the carnival would have no reason to play there. Then The Harlequin might show himself again, perhaps to his undoing.

When Steve expressed this opinion to Margo, she didn’t entirely agree. It was an hour before show time and the carnival was on location in the outskirts of a prosperous Kentucky city, but Steve and Margo were wise enough not to be holding their conference on the carnival lot. They were walking over by a railroad siding, nearly a mile away.

“We’ll do good business here in Titustown,” Steve was saying. “It’s what they call another red one, but I prefer bloomers.”

“I don’t see why,” objected Margo.

“The show is North, isn’t it?”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Only that it’s getting off its proper route, which is enough. It must have

been too long a hop to the place where The Harlequin wants to go next, so we’re

making it in short ones.”

It was logical enough to Steve, but this business of The Harlequin being real master of the show was something that griped him considerably.

“Pop Sorber is just a figurehead,” gruffed Steve, “and a mutton-head, if you want my full opinion. I wish I knew who really owned the outfit.”

“Have you tried to find out?”

“Yes, and I wind up by having people ask me. I can’t even learn if Pop is taking orders from his silent partner, who may be as innocent as Pop or as guilty.”

“But somebody must be giving the orders,” argued Margo, “otherwise we wouldn’t be skipping around the way we are.”

“The bookings come in from Kid Klaudey,” explained Steve. “Maybe he’s doing

just what Pop says he is, grabbing whatever stands he can, now that the route has gone haywire. It’s a case of filling in until the Fairs open, and Pop says the Kid is doing better than he’d hoped.”

They dropped the conversation as they reached an elongated tent that covered the whole end of a railway siding. One of the hype artists was sitting behind a high ticket booth, making short change for any customers who were foolish enough to come this far to view a solitary attraction. Since a few townspeople were around, Steve made a pretense, of laying money on the stand; raising two fingers, he added the confidential password: “Shill.”

Steve received two tickets free, with a nod of thanks from the hyper in the

booth. Not many people with the outfit would walk this far just to stimulate business for Walla-Walla, the only show that was going badly. A couple of shills

could always start up trade, so while Steve and Margo were going in the tent, the outside man began his spiel about the “magnificent sixty-foot whale, carried at huge expense on its own special car, the first of its kind ever west of the Allegheny Mountains.

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