THE RUSTED WIRE
"Yes," went on the circus treasurer, as he rubbed his chin reflectively,
"it's a curious state of affairs, and as you're so vitally interested I
came to you at once. There's going to be trouble!"
"Trouble!" cried Joe with a laugh. "I can't see that, Mr. Moyne. You say
there's a big crowd of people at our circus--too much of a crowd, in
fact. I can't see anything wrong in that. It's just what we're always
wanting--a big audience. Let 'em fill the tent, I say, and put out the
'Straw Seats Only' sign. Trouble! Why, I should say this was good luck!"
and Joe hastened his preparations, for he wanted to go on with the big
swing.
"Ordinarily," said Mr. Moyne, in the slow, precise way he had of
speaking, brought about, perhaps, by his need of being exact in money
matters, "a big crowd would be the very thing we should want. But this
time we don't--not this kind of a crowd."
"What do you mean?" asked Joe, beginning to feel that it was more than a
mere notion on the part of the treasurer that something was wrong. "Is
it a rough crowd? Will there be a 'hey rube!' cry raised--a fight
between our men and the mill hands?"
"Oh, no, nothing like that!" the treasurer hastened to assure Joe. "The
whole thing is just this. There are a great many more people in the main
top now than there are admission prices in the treasurer's cash box. The
books don't balance, as it were."
"More people in the tent than have paid their way?" asked Joe. "Well,
that always happens at a circus. Small boys will crawl in under the
canvas in spite of clubs."
"Oh, it isn't a question of the small boys--I never worry about them,"
returned Mr. Moyne. "But there are about a thousand more persons at the
performance which will soon begin than we have admission prices for. In
other words there are a thousand persons occupying fifty cent seats that
haven't paid their half dollar. It isn't the reserve chairs that are
affected. We're all right there. But fully a thousand persons have come
into the show, and we're short five hundred dollars in our cash."
"You don't tell me!" cried Joe. He saw that Mr. Moyne was very much in
earnest. "Have the ticket men and the entrance attendants been working a
flim-flam game on us?"
"Oh, no, it isn't that," said the treasurer. "I could understand that.
But the men are perfectly willing to have their accounts gone over and
their tickets checked up. They're straight!"
"Then what is it?" asked Joe.
"That's what we've got to find out," went on Mr. Moyne. "In some way the
thousand people have come in without paying the circus anything. And
they didn't sneak in, either. A few might do that, but a thousand
couldn't. They've come in by the regular entrance."
"Did they force themselves past without tickets?"
"No, each one had the proper coupon."
"Has there been a theft of our tickets?" demanded the young magician and
acrobat.
"No, our ticket account is all right, except there are a thousand extra
entrance coupons in the box--coupons taken in by the entrance
attendants. It's a puzzle to me," confessed the treasurer. "There is
some game being played on us, and we're out to the tune of five hundred
dollars by it already."
"Is there any way of finding out who these persons are who have come in
without paying us and having them ejected?" asked Joe.
"I don't see how," admitted Mr. Moyne. "If they were in reserved seats
it could be done, but not in the ordinary un-numbered fifty cent
section. The whole situation is that we have a thousand persons too many
at the show."
"Well, we'll have a meeting of the executive body and take it up after
the performance," said Joe, as he quickly prepared to get into his
aerial costume. "We'll have to go on with the performance now; it's
getting late. If we're swamped by people coming along who hold our
regular tickets we'll have to sit 'em anywhere we can. If we lose five
hundred dollars we'll make it up by having a smashing crowd, which is
always a good advertisement. I'll see you directly after the show, Mr.
Moyne."
"I wish you would," said the harassed treasurer. "Something must be done
about it. If this happens very often we'll be in a financial hole at the
end of the season."
He departed, looking at some figures he had jotted down on the back of
an envelope.
Joe Strong was puzzled. Nothing like this had ever come up before. True,
there had been swindlers who tried to mulct the circus of money, and
there were always small boys, and grown men, too, who tried to crawl in
under the tent. But such a wholesale game as this Joe had never before
known.
"Well, five hundred dollars, for once, won't break us," he said grimly,
as he fastened on a brightly spangled belt, "but I wouldn't want it to
happen very often. Now I wonder what luck I'll have in my big swing. I
haven't done it in public for some time, but it went all right in
practice."
Joe looked from his dressing room. He was all ready for his act now,
but the time had not yet come for him to go on. He saw Helen hastening
past on her way to enter the ring with her horse, Rosebud, which a groom
held at the entrance for her.
"Good luck!" called Joe, waving his hand and smiling.
"The same to you," answered Helen. "You'll need it more than I. Oh,
Joe," she went on earnestly, "won't you give up this big swing? Stick to
your box trick, and let me act with you in the disappearing lady stunt.
Don't go on with this high trapeze act!" she pleaded.
"Why, Helen! anybody would think you'd been bitten by the jinx bug!"
laughed Joe. "I thought you were all over that."
"Perhaps I am foolish," she said. "But it's because--"
She blushed and looked away.
"I suppose I should take it as a compliment that you are so interested
in my welfare," said Joe, with a smile. "And, believe me, I am. But,
Helen, I can't back out of this act now. It's been advertised big. I've
got to go on!"
"Then do be careful, won't you?" she begged. "Oh, do be careful!
Somehow, I have a feeling that--Oh, well, I won't set you to worrying by
telling you," she said quickly, with a laugh, in which, however, there
was no mirth. She smiled again, trying to make it a bright one; but Joe
saw that she was under a strain.
"I'll be careful," he promised. "Really, there's no danger. I've done
the stunt a score of times, and I can judge my distance perfectly.
Besides there's the safety net."
"Yes, I know, but there was poor--Oh, well, I won't talk about it! Good
luck!" and she hurried on, for it was time for her act--the whistle of
the ringmaster having blown.
Joe looked after the girl he loved. He smiled, and then a rather serious
look settled over his face. Like a flash there had come to him the
memory of the too loquacious Harry Loper, who had fitted up his aerial
apparatus.
"There can be nothing wrong with that," mused Joe. "I went over every
inch of it. I guess Helen is just nervous. Well, there goes my cue!"
He hurried toward the entrance, and then he began to ponder over the
curious fact of there being a thousand persons too many at the
performance.
"We'll have to straighten out that ticket tangle after the show," mused
Joe. "It's likely to get serious. I wonder--" he went on, struck by a
new thought. "I wonder if--Oh, no! It couldn't be! He hasn't been around
in a long while."
Out into the tent, filled with a record-breaking crowd, went Joe to the
place where his high trapeze was waiting for him. The band was playing
lively airs, on one platform some trained seals were juggling big balls
of colored rubber, and on another a bear was going about on roller
skates. In one end ring Helen was performing with Rosebud, while in
another a troupe of Japanese acrobats were doing wonderful things with
their supple bodies.
Joe waved his hand to Helen in passing, and then he began to ascend to
his high platform. When he reached it and stood poised ready for his
act, there came a shrill whistle from Jim Tracy, the ringmaster, who
wore his usual immaculate shirt front and black evening clothes--rather
incongruous in the daytime.
The whistle was the signal for the other acts to cease, that the
attention of all might be centered on Joe. This is always done in a
circus in the case of "stars," and Joe was certainly a star of the first
magnitude.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Jim Tracy, with the accented drawl that
carried his voice to the very ends of the big tent. "Calling your
attention to one of the most marvelous high trapeze acts ever performed
in any circus!"
He pointed dramatically to Joe, who stood up straight, ready to do his
act.
"Are you ready?" asked the man who was to release the trapeze, which
was caught up at one side of the platform opposite Joe.
"Ready," answered the young acrobat.
The man pulled a rope which released a catch, letting the trapeze start
on its long swaying swing. The man pulled it by means of a long, thin
cord, until it was making big arcs, like some gigantic pendulum.
Joe watched it carefully, judging it to the fraction of an inch. He
stood poised and tense on the gayly decorated platform, himself a fine
picture of physical young manhood. The band was blaring out the latest
Jazz melody.
Suddenly, from his perch, the young acrobat gave a cry, and Jim Tracy,
on the ground below, hearing it, held up his white-gloved hand as a
signal for the music to cease.
Then Joe leaped. Full and fair he leaped out toward the swinging bar of
the big trapeze, the snare drum throbbing out as he jumped. He was dimly
conscious of thousands of eyes watching him--eyes that looked curiously
and apprehensively up. And he realized that Helen was also watching him.
As true as a die, Joe's hands caught and gripped the bar of the swinging
trapeze. So far he was safe. The momentum of his jump carried him in a
long swing, and he at once began to undulate himself to increase his
swing. He must do this in order to get to the second platform.
As the young performer began to do this, he looked up at the wire ropes
of his trapeze.
It was a look given instinctively and for no particular purpose, as
Joe's eyes must rest, most of all, on the second platform where he
needed to land, to save himself from a bad fall.
As his eyes glanced along the steel cables on which his life depended,
he saw, to his horror, a spot of rust on one. And at the spot of rust
several of the thin strands of twisted wire were loose and frayed.
The cable seemed about to give way!