My attention shifted suddenly back to Merlini and Gus, as I heard the former ask, “When did the Headless Lady join up?”
“Friday, I think,” Gus replied. “Wasn’t it, Stella?”
Stella, the woman who, according to the inscription on the chart behind her, knows all, sees all, and tells all, answered, “I guess so.”
“Who is she?” Merlini continued off-handedly. “Anyone I know?”
But Gus didn’t get to answer just then. A lean, lantern-jawed gentleman with a pair of innocent brown eyes and his hat brim turned up all the way around, stepped from the crowd and touched Merlini’s arm.
“Pardon me, brother, but can you tell me how soon the big show starts?” His voice was that of the country yokel, but there was a knowing grin on his face.
“Holy jumping camelopards!” Merlini ejaculated. “Farmer Jack!” They shook hands energetically. “Ross, step over here. I want you to meet the dean of the broad tossers, the best three-card-monte man in the business. If he offers you a little bet on a sure thing, run for the nearest exit! Tell me something, Farmer. Last I heard this was a Sunday School show. When did the grift come back?”
Farmer grinned. “It’s coming back on a lot of shows. Last season was a bloomer for one thing, and the grift’s a sort of insurance. And then, too, when the fixer walks into Johnny Tin Plate’s office and says, ‘No grift at all this year, Chief,’ for an answer he gets, ‘Oh. That’s nice. But how the hell do I get mine?’ And the fix has to be paid off anyway. So why not frame a store or two?”
“I can’t think of a real good answer for that one, Farmer. You’re on the payroll then?”
“Yeah. I think so. But maybe I’m wrong. Orders came through to lay off a few days. But if I don’t get the office soon, I’m blowing. Seems like every time I take a vacation the chumps walk right up asking for it.”
“Why the layoff? Too much heat in these parts?”
“No. There aren’t many beefs the way I dust ’em off. Don’t know what it is. Something goin’ on around this outfit that I’m not hep to.”
“It’s the advance crew for one thing,” Gus put in disgustedly. “Kelley and Edwards. They’ve gone nuts. Here, look at this route card.”
Gus continued, “Seventy-, eighty-mile jumps every day, and a lot of wrong towns. Waterboro’s a grass town. Show this size hadn’t oughta be here. We won’t come close to making the nut. Norwalk tomorrow, and that’s worse. I don’t get it. We even played Bridgeport less’n two weeks after the Big Show.”
“And,” Farmer added, “we just got out of mine-strike territory in Pennsy, and we’re heading smack into a milk strike upstate. But it’s not the advance crew, Gus. They don’t know no more about it than we do. Couple of them back on the lot Sunday and crabbin’ about it. It’s orders from the old man.”
“Salaries paid up?” Merlini asked.
“Yes,” Gus said, “but that’s funny, too. We were six weeks behind up until Saturday. Lots of folks were all set to blow. Three or four big top acts did leave. Then we got the whole thing up to date, all at once. Like that.”
“The Major land an angel?” Merlini asked.
“Looks like it,” Farmer answered. “High-class sucker, too. I’d like to have his phone number. But say, hasn’t anybody told you—”
The lecturer’s voice cut in above Farmer’s. “Over here, ladies and gentlemen — the strangest, most startling scientific exhibition ever shown, Mademoiselle Christine, the Headless Lady.”
Merlini gave me a glance. “Christine,” he said. “Perhaps we’d better watch this.” He started toward the crowd that stood before the speaker.
“Two years ago,” the lecturer stated in a brisk clinical tone, “a terrible railway accident occurred near Paris, France. Many of you doubtless read about it. Mademoiselle Christine, who you are about to see, was in that accident. They found her among the dead and dying in the twisted wreckage with the bony structure of her skull horribly crushed. But she still lived! By a fortunate chance, the accident happened close to the private villa and research laboratories of the great surgeon, Dr. Josef Veronoff, world famous, as you all know, for his wonderful experiments in keeping human and animal tissue alive in chemical solutions. He saw at once that Mademoiselle Christine’s head injuries could never be repaired by any surgical means. He kept her alive for three days with adrenalin and serum injections, while his technical assistants hastily constructed the marvelous apparatus you are about to see. Then Dr. Veronoff completely amputated the young lady’s head! And substituted his astounding machine!”
The lecturer pulled a cord; the curtains drew apart. “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Mademoiselle Christine, the Lady Without a Head! The eighth wonder of the world of science!”
The display was obviously the lecturer’s favorite. He really went to town and put oomph into his buildup. He did it well; the spectators, up to this point, had expected to see something falling as far short of the painting on the banner outside as did some of the other exhibits. But they were fooled. The side-show banner artist had, for once, found it impossible to gild the lily. The Headless Lady was exactly that.
Her body, dressed in brief shorts and brassière, sat on a high hospital stool made of metal tubing. Her figure was Grade A plus in all respects — except that it simply stopped short at the base of her neck. A cup-shaped rubber attachment was fixed between her shoulders, and six slender glass tubes rose upward from it, curved in a half-circle, and terminated in six descending tubes of rubber. Three of these were attached, on the left, to a radiolike apparatus, the front panel of which was covered with rheostat dials and electrical switches. The other three tubes led off to a chemico-electrical apparatus on the right, fitted with pressure gauges of strange design, an electric motor with visibly moving eccentric parts, and a complex hookup of chemical glassware — beakers, retorts, and flasks in which a red fluid bubbled. The same liquid could also be seen circulating through the glass tubes that led into the body at the base of the neck. A green light pulsated at a respiratory rate.
Above the girl’s shoulders there was simply nothing but the curved glass tubes and empty space!
“This apparatus,” the lecturer went on, “substitutes for all the physical activities of the missing brain. It supplies nervous stimulation to the body, and feeds it with a carefully regulated chemical diet and a steady flow of blood.
“The machine on your right is Dr. Veronoff’s elaboration of the diagram you see here.” With a perfectly straight face, the lecturer exhibited a framed, glass-covered Sunday Supplement double-spread. The article was headed: Carrel Keeps Tissues Alive in Serum; and the diagram he indicated was a schematic drawing of the Lindbergh heart.
The lecturer continued, “Many people, when they see Miss Christine, are skeptical. They have said that her body is merely a cleverly constructed dummy. I’ll let you decide that for yourselves.” He lifted a limp arm and pressed his thumb for a moment against its flesh. He removed his thumb, and we saw that its pressure had left a white spot on the arm which gradually faded away as the blood returned.
“I will now,” he said dramatically, “turn on the nerve exciter.” He threw a switch and moved several of the dials on the electrical equipment. A four-inch spark suddenly spit and leaped with a bright flash between two copper electrode terminals.
The body moved for the first time. The fingers of the hands twitched. Slowly the lecturer turned a rheostat, and slowly the sputtering, intermittent crackle of the spark grew faster. The girl’s arms moved upward from their position on her thighs; her fingers jerked spasmodically in a clawing, galvanic movement that accelerated with the spark’s increasing frequency. This continued for half a minute; then the crackling subsided; the finger jerks slowed; the arms settled again into their former position, and finally came to rest. The spark ceased abruptly.