CHAPTER XIII

Question Intimate

“Why,” was the Probate Court Estates Custodian’s challenging query, “did you just now term yourself a clod?”

Pell felt choler rising in him. Not at the question, however, but at his recollection of the cool, calm self-assured insouciance that had been on the face of the man who’d originally uttered the term.

“Oh, anger, I guess,” was all Pell could say, “at recalling when I’d got it applied to me. You see, the head spieler in my outfit handed me that appellation while I was waiting for a train—”

“I hope you pasted him one? For you’re anything but—”

“I—I had reason to want to. But if you ever heard a precious one-a-day jerkwater whistling from down the track—and knew it was then or never—”

“I understand. Well what circus are you with?”

“The biggest on earth.”

“Ah? Ringling Brothers, eh? Or Scarnum and Trilby’s? Or Cole Brothers? Which?”

“None of the three. I forgot to say that mine is the biggest little circus on earth.”

“Oh! Little circus, eh? Then it’s Colliby’s Travelling Gal-er-ee of Human Curiosities, or the Flying Tetranis and their Show?”

“Say,” said Pell admiringly, “you know your stuff! No, it’s Angus MacWhorter’s.”

“Don’t—tell me! MacWhorter’s! Is he ali—say, his is the only honest show I ever knew of. Saw it years ago when—why I don’t believe he even lets pickpockets go along. Or does—”

“Right. Right. Right!”

“Or lets the ticket-seller pass out dollar bills, in change for five and tens, folded double to count as two.”

“Out they go—said ticket-sellers—if they’re caught at it.”

“Boy, oh boy—are you a breath from the past. Angus alive! You don’t say. And co-axial cables haven’t driven him out of bus—”

“We have, in our presentation, smells, colour, excitement, sounds—something you don’t get on that old television screen—even if you’re in receiving range of a station.”

“I know—I know—I know. I tell my six boys, as they sit with their noses pressed against that glass, looking at those confounded wooden dolls, Kukla, Fran and Ollie—”

By this time a shirt-sleeved man was coming in. With a folder envelope.

He laid it on his superior’s desk. And left.

Pershouse Ovenu dumped out the contents. Which were indeed sparse! A pair of heavy, presumably gold cuff-links with a spicule of diamond in each, reflecting the window light. A narrow definitely short-half of a green hundred dollar bill.

And a letter, written in pencil—

A letter, however, which had a pin through it at its upper left-hand corner. Showing it was more than the sheet visible and uppermost.

That it still possessed the further sheet—of which Pell had gotten to know only the contents of its prior sheet. Two sheets. To person unknown. Unfinished.

He reached over for it. But looked up at the other. “May I—I read this—while I sit here?”

“Can do an-ee-thing you wish,” said the other graciously. “So long as it stays here in the folder—and goes back into the file.”

“Then here goes,” said Pell, “And believe me, I’m reading page two of this letter as never was a page two read-before!”