Алистер Маклин: Circus

‘If you were a genuine army colonel,’ Pilgrim said, ‘instead of one of the most bogus and unconvincing frauds I’ve ever seen, you’d rate three stars for this. Excellently done, my dear Fawcett, excellently done.’

Pilgrim was the great-grandson of an English peer of the realm and it showed. Both in dress and in speech he was slightly foppish and distinctly Edwardian: subconsciously, almost, one looked for the missing monocle, the Old Etonian tie. His exquisitely cut suits came from Savile Row, his shirts from Turnbull and Asser and his pair of matched shotguns, which at 4000 dollars he regarded as being cheap at the price, came, inevitably, from Purdeys of the West End. The shoes, regrettably, were hand-made in Rome. To have him auditioned for the screen part of Sherlock Holmes would have been superfluous.

Fawcett did not react to the criticism, the praise or the understated sartorial splendour. His facial muscles seldom reacted to anything – which may have been due to the fact that his unlined face was so plump it was almost moon-shaped. His bucolic expression verged upon the bemused: large numbers of people languishing behind federal bars had been heard to testify, frequently and with understandable bitterness, that the impression Fawcett conveyed was deceptive to the point of downright immorality.

Half-hooded eyes deep-sunk in the puffy flesh, Fawcett’s gaze traversed the leather-lined library and came to rest on the sparking pine fire. His voice wistful, he said, ‘One would wish that promotion were so spectacular and rapid in the CIA.’

‘Dead men’s shoes, my boy.’ Pilgrim was at least five years younger than Fawcett. ‘Dead men’s shoes.’ He regarded his own Roman foot briefly and with some satisfaction, then transferred his attention to the splendid collection of ribbons on Fawcett’s chest. ‘I see you have awarded yourself the Congressional Medal of Honour.’

‘I felt it was in keeping with my character.’

‘Quite. This paragon you have unearthed, Bruno. How did you come across him?’

‘I didn’t. Smithers did, when I was in Europe. Smithers is a great circus fan.’

‘Quite.’ Pilgrim seemed fond of the word. ‘Bruno. One would assume that he has another name.’

‘Wildermann. But he never uses it – professionally or privately.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never met him. Presumably Smithers never asked him either. Would you ask Pele or Callas or Liberace what their other names are?’

‘You class his name with those?’

‘It’s my understanding that the circus world would hesitate to class those names with his.’

Pilgrim picked up some sheets of paper. ‘Speaks the language like a native.’

‘He is a native.’

‘Billed as the world’s greatest aerialist.’ Pilgrim was a hard man to knock off his stride. ‘Daring young man on the flying trapeze? That sort of thing?’

‘That, too. But he’s primarily a high-wire specialist.’

‘The best in the world?’

‘His fellow professionals are in no doubt about it.’

‘If our information about Crau is correct, he’d better be. I see he claims to be an expert in karate and judo.’

‘He has never claimed anything of the kind. I claim it for him – rather, Smithers does, and as you know Smithers is very much an expert in those matters. He watched Bruno having a work-out down-town this morning in the Samurai club. The instructor there is a black belt – they don’t come any higher in judo. By the time Bruno had finished with him – well, I understand the instructor disappeared with the general air of a man about to write out his resignation on the spot. Smithers said he hadn’t seen Bruno chopping people around in karate: he has the feeling he wouldn’t like to, either.’

‘And this dossier claims that he is a mentalist.’ Pilgrim steepled his fingers in the best Holmes fashion. ‘Well, good for Bruno. What the devil is a mentalist?’

‘Chap that does mental things.’

Pilgrim exercised a massive restraint. ‘You have to be an intellectual to be an aerialist?’

‘I don’t even know whether you have to be an intellectual – or even intelligent – in order to be an aerialist. It’s beside the point. Practically every circus performer doubles up and does one, sometimes even two jobs in addition to his speciality in the actual arena. Some act as labourers – they have mountains of equipment to move around. Some are entertainers. Bruno doubles as an entertainer. Just outside the circus proper they have a showground, fairground, call it what you will, which is used to separate the arriving customers from their spare cash. Bruno performs in a small theatre, just a collapsible plywood job. He reads minds, tells you the first name of your great-grandfather, the numbers of the dollar bills in your pockets, what’s written or drawn inside any sealed envelope. Things like that.’

‘It’s been done. Audience plants and the hocus-pocus of any skilled stage magician.’

‘Possibly, although the word is that he can do things for which there is no rational accounting and which professional conjurers have failed to reproduce. But what interests us most is that he has a totally photographic memory. Give him an opened double-spread of, say, Time magazine. He’ll look at it for a couple of seconds, hand it back, then offer to identify the word in any location you select. You say to him that you’d like to know what the third word in the third line in the third column on the right-hand page is and if he says it’s, say, “Congress” then you can lay your life it is “Congress”. And he can do this in any language – he doesn’t have to understand it.’

‘This I have to see. A propos , if he’s such a genius, why doesn’t he concentrate exclusively on stage work? Surely he could make a fortune out of that, much more than by risking his life turning somersaults up there in the low cloud?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. According to Smithers, he’s not exactly paid in pennies. He’s the outstanding star in the outstanding circus on earth. But that wouldn’t be his real reason. He’s the lead member of a trio of aerialists called “The Blind Eagles”, and without him they’d be lost. I gather they are not mentalists.’

‘I wonder. We can’t afford excessive sentiment and loyalty in our business.’

‘Sentiment, no. Loyalty – to us – yes. To others, yes also. If they are your two younger brothers.’

‘A family trio?’

‘I thought you knew.’

Pilgrim shook his head. ‘You called them The Blind Eagles?’

‘No undue hyperbole, Smithers tells me. Not when you’ve seen their act. They may not quite be up in the wild blue yonder or hanging about, as you suggest, in the low cloud, but they’re not exactly earthbound either. On the upswing of the trapeze they’re eighty feet above terra firma. Whether you fall from eighty feet or eight hundred, the chances of breaking your neck – not to mention most of the two hundred-odd bones in your body – are roughly the same. Especially if you’re blindfolded and can’t tell up from down, while your body can’t tell you exactly where up is and most certainly can’t locate down.’

‘You’re trying to tell me–’

‘They wear those black silk cotton gloves when they take off from one trapeze to another. People think there may be some advanced electronic quirk in those gloves, like negative poles attracting positive poles, but there isn’t. Just for better adhesion, that’s all. They have no guidance system at all. Their hoods are entirely opaque but they never miss – well, obviously they never miss or they would be one Blind Eagle short by this time. Some form of extra-sensory perception, I suppose – whatever that may mean. Only Bruno has it, which is why he is the catcher.’