fourteen

“I’m all right,” I said. I felt foolish but it was a physical reaction. All energy had just drained from me when the danger was over. “I’ll be all right in a moment,” I corrected myself. I watched as, below us, the film people poured back into the cage. The Roosevelt impersonator tiptoed forward, reaching out with his rifle to test that the lion was dead.

The real hunter brushed past him and bent to check the body. “He’s dead.” He looked up at Whitbread. “I was having a hard time getting a second shot off. Good thing you had a pistol.”

I don’t know what I expected—some concern, some apology, perhaps, for the fright we’d endured. But that was not how things worked in this off-kilter world. On the contrary, we were ignored as Emmet O’Neill was chastised and boosted back up to the platform.

“Why did you run?” Col. Selig asked O’Neill. “He couldn’t reach you at that height.” He twisted his neck to look up and, noticing me, gave a polite nod as if we were at a tea party.

When O’Neill reached the top of the ladder he shrugged. “It didn’t look that way.” He glanced at me guiltily but continued over to his camera to prepare for the next scene. Whitbread just shook his head and sat down beside me, his arm around my shoulders.

It was wildly incorrect and inappropriate. We’d just been attacked by a wounded lion that lay dead and bloody below us, yet the only reaction was to get on with the new scene. I felt like Alice when she stepped through the looking glass. I spotted my brother in the crowd below and, once he saw I was unharmed, he avoided my eyes. Surely he must be as shocked as me but apparently not. The way Whitbread continued to shake his head and narrow his eyes, I could tell he shared my amazement. We could have demanded to be let down and out of the cage, but we were too dumbfounded to speak. We just continued to watch the spectacle as we recovered our senses.

With the assurance of the real hunter that the animal was dead, Mr. Leeder started yelling through his megaphone and soon the cameramen were cranking again as one of the “natives” emerged from the jungle and gave an excited yell at the sight of the poor old lion collapsed on his side. The king of the jungle looked at rest, as if he had finally escaped the prods and noise. A nervous-looking Roosevelt stepped up, followed by the rest of his party, and the hunter took the lion’s tail in his hands and pulled the corpse out into the open under the loud directives of Leeder. Suppressing an obvious distaste, Roosevelt acknowledged Leeder’s commands and lifted the head to count the bullet holes. Still under direction, he let the head fall, put his right foot on the lion’s prone body and waved his hat with his left hand to signal victory. Suddenly, his party of hunters and all the “natives” were shaking hands and smiling for the cameras while Leeder screamed at them. Just as suddenly, the cameras stopped cranking and everyone dispersed.

Whitbread patted my shoulder. “Shall we descend?” He helped me to the ladder and my brother had the grace to assist me at the bottom, before turning away.

Col. Selig smiled broadly. “I believe we’ve come as near to the real thing as could be done,” he said, and I realized he expected us to be as thrilled with the result of the action as he was.

I was dumbfounded for a moment as I got my legs steady on the firm ground again. Behind me I could hear Leeder and his crew discussing how they would tie the lion to a pole and parade him around before setting up for the hunter to skin the animal in front of the cameras. I had no wish at all to see any of that.

Col. Selig noticed my discomfort so he tucked my hand in his arm to escort me out of the safety cage. “It’s all quite safe, my dear,” he reassured me. “The animals are all kept in line by Mr. Breitkreutz. We call him Big Otto.” He pointed to a broad-shouldered bald man wearing only an undershirt and short pants of a shiny material who stood beside a series of cages that held more animals. He moved from cage to cage with a bucket, shoveling slops into feeding mangers. “Big Otto had a circus in Milwaukee and it was great luck that I ran into him. We have an arrangement—he gets to keep and feed his animals, and we use them to get very real effects in our films.” Col. Selig was proud of himself. “The lion was old. I bought him outright with the intention of having him shot before the camera. It’ll be a fantastic effect unlike anything people have seen before.”

I shivered. I couldn’t help it. He noticed. “Now, my dear, you mustn’t worry. If we’d sent a cameraman on the real hunt, you would have seen real animals killed, you know. Many more than this. That’s what a hunt is. But it would have been much harder to get really good film of the animals and been much more dangerous.” He steered me around to look back at the jungle set. “This way we can get close to the animals without getting mauled.”

“It didn’t feel safe,” I said. Whitbread, who was following close behind us, agreed.

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Selig said. “Compared to wild animals, these ones are domesticated. As a matter of fact, that lion was bred in captivity and never stepped into a jungle before today. Come, I want to introduce you to someone.” He led us to a long, wide cage where I was appalled to see a tall woman lying on a chaise lounge surrounded by three leopards. Two of them stalked lightly, muscles rippling across their shoulders. Another lay with his head in the woman’s lap.

“Olga, this is Mrs. Chapman and Detective Whitbread. They’re here about poor Mr. Hyde’s death. This is Miss Olga Celeste, our Leopard Lady,” Selig said.