10-Story Detective, November 1942 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BIG TOP KILL-RIDE——-————_—35 The man sitting next to me at the cookhouse counter swiveled around on the stool. His feet hit the ground running. All along the counter and back at the tables showfolks were get- ting up and forgetting that they ever had been hungry. I took out after the guy who had sat next to me. His name was Dan Hopping. He was foreman of the twin ferris wheels—Eli No. 5’s on this show. As I pounded along after him I began firing questions. “What’s happened?” I shouted at him. “Why is there a ride in motion this early? Maybe the crew is just testing—”’ Dan Hopping flung his answer back across his shoulder as he ran. *“Nobody would be testing that ride! It?s my new one—the Dipperoo!” That didn’t mean anything to me then. I’d just joined up with the car- nival company as a barker on the front of the Fun House. But even be- fore this excitement about the ride got under way Id had time to find out that everybody on the show was punchy with the jitters. The ride that was in motion was off at the far end of the midway. I hadn’t paid it much attention before; it seemed to be set off from the mid- way as though it wasn’t meant for public use. I wondered about that now as I followed Hopping under the rope fence that circled the ride. Hopping was swearing and as I looked toward the platform of the ride I felt like swearing, too—or being sick. It was death in an ugly form. One of the sideshow freaks, Little Eva, had pitched headlong out of the single car of the thrill-ride and crushed her skull when she’d struck the platform. Little Eva was a pinhead—you must have seen her type of freak; midget size or a little Jarger—with a conical skull coming up almost to a point. “I was sure it was Eva when I heard that scream,” Hopping said. “Remember how she screamed and covered her ears when she dropped the bag of popcorn back at the cook- house?” I remembered all right. That point- ed little skull of Eva’s hadn’t had room for her brain to develop. She was a birdlike little creature with a birdlike brain. Because she was harmless she had been allowed to roam the midway and that fact had annoyed some of the showfolks. HE whole scene came back to me & now. I had just sat down at the counter to eat supper. Eva had got up to leave. A fellow they called Gus, who was a wrestler in the athletic show, had put salt in Eva’s cornflakes and that had set her off screaming. Then she’d come back with a bag of pop- corn and bumped against Sophie La- Verne, fan dancer in the cootch show. LaVerne had pinched Eva where it would do the most good. Eva had screamed, and then delighted at her own terror had dropped the popcorn and covered her ears. I’d heard this LaVerne was the boss’ girl—and be- lieved it now. Real showfolks are nev- er cruel to the little people. One of the other showmen, a fel- low they called Fiero, had grumbled about the management letting Eva hang around the cookhouse. I remem- bered Fiero more particularly than the rest because he was the fire-diver on this carnival—what is known as the free act. I hadn’t told anybody, but before joining out with this carnival I had spent a long session in a hospital. And before that, I had been the fire-diver on a carny in the midwest. Ironically, that’s where the money was, the free act! But long weeks in a hospital bed, after a slight miscalculation of air currents, had convinced me that I was done with the high ladder for good. Now, as people crowded around us and the show owner himself came pushing and shoving through the crowd, I was wondering if this had been an accident—or murder. And if it was murder, did we have three live- cConmmiclboooks (C@