Fatal Elixir Page 6

  Clayton Henry was hidden from me on the other side of a post. I wondered how he ranked this as Art.

  It didn’t last long, but while it was going on, nobody bought any newspapers.

  The music stopped, and now I saw that it had been Herkimer himself who had been doing the fiddling. There was, apparently, no end to that man’s talents.

  With a last clash of bangles, the woman stopped, threw her arms up and her head back in a posture of ecstatic triumph, then quickly climbed back into the wagon.

  The megaphone went back to Herkimer’s mouth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you have been granted a rare privilege: a small part of the Ancient Egyptian Dance of the Sun God. The storied Cleopatra changed the fate of nations performing that Sacred Ritual for Julius Caesar! It has been handed down in secret for generations—Princess Farrah is the last initiate of these mysteries! Descended from the Pharaohs, a protégé of Napoleon the Great, who became the trusted friend of the princess’s grandfather during his own conquest of that fabled land of the pyramids. Princess Farrah was sent as a child to share the Emperor’s exile—”

  “Fraud!”

  Herkimer had been laying it on a bit thick, and it had gotten to be too much for Dr. Mayhew. Forgetting professional decorum, he shouted it again. “Fraud! Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1822!”

  It’s hard to imagine how one can talk confidentially through a megaphone, but Herkimer managed it.

  “So he did, my astute friend, so he did. And there is not a bit of fraud about it. The beauteous figure you saw performing gyrations beyond the capabilities of our most energetic youth has, in fact, been walking this earth for sixty-seven years!”

  Dr. Mayhew knew he’d been had; he looked angry and sick.

  As for me, I burst out laughing at the audacity of the man, but the sound of my mirth was drowned out by the great “Ooooohhhhh!!!” that went up from the crowd.

  Herkimer wasn’t done yet.

  “Now, my friends, I will not lie to you. Her devotion to the Sun God forces Princess Farrah to keep secret the full extent of the mystic methods by which she maintains her eternal youth and beauty, even from me, her devoted friend and protector.

  “But in gratitude for my having saved her life from snip-wreck in a China Sea monsoon, she has given me to know a portion of the wonders of which she is mistress, and that secret, ladies and gentlemen, like all my knowledge of science and medicine, has found its way into Ozono!

  “You may claim your share of the wonders this evening, at”—he took a piece of paper from his pocket and glanced at it—“Grechtstein’s orchard. At dusk. One dollar the bottle, for a better life than you have known hitherto. I bid you, dear friends, good day.”

  With that, he took a deep bow, sat down, and had his driver gallop the horses out of town.

  As the crowd dispersed and we turned to go inside, Merton Mayhew said, “Um, Mr. Blacke, is it okay if I hang around the office for a while? I don’t think my dad wants anybody around right now.”

  “Sure,” Blacke grunted. To me, he said, “Well, Booker, your first medicine show. What do you think?”

  I waited until we were back inside the Witness office before I answered. “I’m glad the man is content just with traveling from town to town and fleecing dollars from the townsfolk.”

  Rebecca frowned. “Why is that, Quinn?”

  “Because with his gift for fast talk, if he just settled down in a city, he could go into politics, get elected, and fleece people of millions.”

  “He’s good, all right,” Blacke conceded. “And I’ve seen lots of them. But his real secret weapon is the girl. She is something else again.”

  “I hardly think,” I said, “that it is proper to refer to a sixty-seven-year-old princess as a ‘girl.’ ”

  “Hah!” Blacke guffawed. “I suppose you’re right, at that. I’ll show more respect.”

  “You should show more pity,” Rebecca said quietly.

  “Pity?” I said.

  Yes, pity, Quinn. Do you think, whoever this person is, that she grew up as a little girl wishing to dance half-naked in a public street and be ogled by strangers?”

  “Well, I suppose not, but—”

  “I don’t have to tell you, do I, that I know what a woman may be reduced to in order to keep body and soul together in a world run by men, do I?”

  For a moment, I was too surprised to speak. It was a tacit but ironclad law in the household that we never ever spoke of Rebecca’s past life. For her to allude to it indicated a depth of feeling on the issue I hadn’t suspected.

  “No, Rebecca,” I said quietly. “No, you don’t.”

  “And you, Uncle Louis?”

  Blacke, as surprised as I was, muttered something that seemed to satisfy her.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, I know that you are both gentlemen in all the ways that count, and that you would never knowingly hurt a woman, especially one who is down. Just try to... to expand your understanding of what a woman goes through, and your instincts will lead you to the right actions. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see if Mrs. Sundberg needs any help with dinner.”

  She went off back to the kitchen.

  When she was gone, Blacke said, “Maybe she ought to go into politics,” but there was great pride and affection in his voice.

  “She’d be a lot better than some of the characters we have running things now. I refer to the New York politics I’m familiar with. I don’t know how things are in the territory.”

  “No better, I imagine. There’s just less of us in the heap for them to get in the way of. Where are you going?”

  I had looked at the clock and risen. Now I said, “I’m going to the station. I promised Miss Jenkins I’d see her off.”

  “Hmpf,” Blacke said. “Maybe with that vixen gone, you’ll expand your understanding a little.”

  “Not again,” I said.

  “Not again what?”

  “Not again your trying to throw me together with Rebecca.”

  “Well, if you weren’t such a bullheaded fool, you’d already be together.”

  “And if you weren’t so blind, you’d see that she’s in love with you.”

  9

  SOMETHING FAR TO THE west—windstorm, cattle stampede, brushfire—had thrown a lot of dust into the air, and those of us who came out to the medicine show were treated to a blood-red sunset as a sort of curtain raiser.

  I was the only one from the Witness here. Henry thought he might come, then decided to paint in his room. Blacke didn’t feel like dealing with the buckboard (which he insisted on driving), and of course, Rebecca and Mrs. Sundberg wouldn’t hear of it.

  I had expected that that little exhibition of ancient Egyptian terpsichorean skill would keep the women of the town away, but there were plenty of them there. Moving through the crowd and eavesdropping, I learned that the women who’d seen it wanted to have their outrage confirmed, and the ones who hadn’t didn’t want to be left out. I was surprised to see Jennie Murdo there, with Buck right with her. She barely acknowledged my greeting, whether because she didn’t want her name broadcast at a gathering like this, or because I was stuck in her mind as the bearer of bad news, I couldn’t say.

  I’d made it to the station in time to see Abigail off. In the light of my ever-expanding understanding, I came to see that even this rich girl had a difficult lot in life, and I told her, sincerely, that I hoped in New York she would find whatever it was she had been looking for.

  In response to that, she gave me a devilish grin, wrapped her arms around my neck, and gave me a kiss dead on the mouth. In front of both her parents. For the rest of the time until the train pulled out, Lucius Jenkins looked at me as if he was measuring me for a rope.

  THERE WAS A SMALL rope barrier erected a few feet past a low wooden platform that was built up to the side of the ornate wagon, which gleamed gloriously in the fading sunlight. I decided to exercise a reporter’s privilege, and ducked under the rope to check things behind the stage.


  I wasn’t the first one to have tried that. Stu Burkhart, a bachelor with a small spread outside of town, was pestering Joseph Feathers for an opportunity just to speak to the princess. Just to say hello. There was a dollar in it for Feathers if he’d just turn the other way for a minute, but Feathers was adamant.

  “You can’t go in there. The final preparations are being made. No one is allowed in there.”

  “That’s bull, fella,” Stu said. The way he slurred his words made it obvious that any alcohol content Ozono might have would be superfluous. “I been here for two hours already, hopin’ to get a sight of her, and I seen somebody come sneakin’ out of the wagon not a half hour ago.”

  “You must be mistaken. A half hour ago, we were all eating by the stream over that rise.”

  He pointed at a small hill. You had to take the stream on faith, but I knew it was there. A pleasant site in which to eat outdoors, at that. I was just surprised that they ate at all. I thought they just lived on Ozono.

  Stu thought he would get belligerent, but then he saw me. Burkhart had been one of the spectators on the day I came to town. I had had to thrash one of Jenkins’s henchmen for making rude remarks to Rebecca. Having been trained in scientific combat by Colonel Bogardus Booker practically since I could stand, it hadn’t been very difficult, but it had been, it seems, impressive to look at.

  And an interesting thing has happened. Since that day, I’ve never had to fight a man with my fists. I’ve never even had to offer to prove it.

  “Come on, Stu,” I said. “Don’t be greedy. You’ll see her when the rest of us do. Isn’t that right, Mr. Feathers?”

  The dark young man grinned in relief. “Oh. Yes, absolutely.” Feathers reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden disk, painted gold, with an overlapping O-Z device painted on it

  “Here,” he said, handing it to Stu. “You may redeem this later for a free bottle of Ozono.”

  Burkhart ignored him. “But, Booker, I’m in love. For the first time in my life, I’m in love.”

  “You are also,” I told him, “drunk. Not for the first time in your life.”

  “Yeah, but I was sober when I seen her in the first place. I just been drinkin’ to work up the nerve.”

  “Well, it worked. But you’re not thinking too well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is a sixty-seven-year-old Egyptian princess really going to be happy on a small farm in the territory?”

  “I’ll make her happy,” Burkhart vowed. “Whatever I gotta do. I’ll go to Egypt with her, if I have to.” He frowned. “Where is that, back east?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Way, way back. Look. You can’t ask someone of her stature to decide to devote her life to you when you’re drunk. Watch the show, go home and sober up, and try again tomorrow. Remember, you saw enough of her to fall in love, but to her, you were just another face in the crowd.”

  A tiny light went on somewhere in his fuddled brain. “Oh,” Burkhart said.

  “You want to make a good first impression, don’t you? After all, your future happiness depends on it.”

  Burkhart took my hand in both of his and pumped it solemnly. “You’re a good friend, Booker. I won’t forget this. You can be best man.”

  “I’d be honored,” I said. Burkhart walked off, pondering.

  When he had staggered out of sight back around the wagon, Feathers shook my hand, too.

  “Thank you, Mr. Booker. Excellent. Do you have experience in the business?”

  “No, I’m just naturally gifted, I guess. Sorry I missed the interview.”

  “Quite all right. The young man gave us excellent coverage. Good crowd tonight.”

  “I suspect that has more to do with the princess than with anything that appeared in the newspaper.”

  He laughed. “She is quite a testimonial to the powers of Ozono, isn’t she?”

  “Beyond a doubt. Sixty-seven years old, and not a single gray hair.”

  Feathers was slightly offended. “You’re scoffing again, Mr. Booker. Wait until tomorrow, when you see what Ozono does for the health of people of this town. The place will never be the same.”

  “With bated breath,” I assured him. That probably sounded like a scoff, too, so I decided to change the subject. “That must happen fairly frequently, I suppose.”

  “What must?”

  “Lovesick drunks trying to get a private audience with the princess.”

  “It wouldn’t do them any good. The princess has taken a vow of silence.”

  “A lot of them,” I speculated, “probably aren’t primarily interested in conversation. No offense meant. It just seems to me you must have evolved a way of dealing with them.”

  “Well, yes, if talking doesn’t work.”

  Feathers pulled his coat aside and showed me a thin canvas bag, stuffed like a sausage with sand, hanging by a little blunt hook from the armhole of his vest. He unhooked it in one smooth motion and whacked it down into the palm of his hand with a solid thump.

  “Leaves no marks, only a headache that is easily treatable with Ozono.”

  He replaced the sandbag and smiled at me. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Booker?”

  “Nothing much. Just being a reporter, looking around.”

  “Well, look away. I’d invite you inside—”

  “That would be very interesting.”

  “But...” He made it three syllables. He took a silver watch from his pocket, clicked the lid. “The show is about to start.” He realized he still had the wooden disk in his hand. “Would you like a complimentary bottle of Ozono, Mr. Booker?”

  I took the disk. “Sure,” I said. Maybe I could present it as a gift to Dr. Mayhew.

  I went back around front and mingled again with the crowd, which had grown in my absence. I saw all sorts of people there: a couple of Sioux, standing by themselves; Reverend Mortensen; and a mountain-man type—could the miracle of Ozono draw a man down out of the Black Hills, some miles to the east?—dressed in fur, and with a hood up over his head, his face invisible, and his hands swathed in gloves.

  My first thought was that he must be parboiled under there. My second, that this was somehow Paul Muller in disguise, I quickly discarded when I realized it couldn’t be him unless he’d taken four inches off his height.

  Mrs. Simpkins, the old schoolmarm, was there, no doubt looking for more hope for her reluctant husband than Dr. Mayhew could offer.

  And there were more farmers, townspeople, strangers, people in traveling clothes who must have come here right off the afternoon train into town, and more.

  Then Feathers came out on the makeshift stage and started to juggle flaming sticks, yelling for their attention as he did so. He didn’t have the voice of Dr. Herkimer, but he held your attention.

  Feathers’s spiel was to the effect that though they might think so, juggling flaming torches was no great achievement. Anybody could do it—who didn’t mind being burned on the hands, face, body, and legs during the learning process. While he was learning, liberal applications of the miracle of Ozono healed his burns in time for the next day’s practice session. Without this marvelous product, he could never have obtained the expertise with which he hoped to have entertained them now.

  He caught the last torch and bowed just as he said the last word. Then he launched into the introduction of the “person you’ve all been waiting for—”

  “The princess!” a voice yelled, Stu Burkhart or another drunk, I couldn’t tell.

  Feathers’s dark face split again in his charming smile. “In due time, my friend, and well worth the wait. But first, one of the geniuses of our age, a benefactor of all Mankind—Dr. Theophrastus Herkimer!”

  And, as the Lord is my judge, he got them to applaud for the man who was going to come forth and sell them snake oil and panther sweat, or whatever it was that went into his concoction.

  And if I thought Theophrastus Herkimer had wrapped his eloquence around all there was to say about the mirac
le of Ozono, I was sadly mistaken. He went on with it for more than three-quarters of an hour, and never repeated himself once. He traced the history of medicine (and pretty accurately, too) right up to Pasteur and Lister, and made it a fascinating story of human triumph. He talked about the arcane secrets of the alchemists. He talked about how he himself had been moved to search dusty volumes of forgotten lore to find these secrets.

  So good was his delivery that I was sure the shade of the late E. A. Poe would make no objection to the near plagiarism.

  He presented testimonials, “sworn affidavits” from those old favorites, the crowned heads of Europe. He did a quick and energetic jig, accompanying himself on the fiddle, and said his robust health was solely the doing of the miracle of Ozono.

  Then he introduced the princess Farrah, and did that weird, wailing thing with the fiddle.

  The princess came out in a white robe this time. She looked like a member of Reverend Mortensen’s choir, except for the jewelry on her head and arms, and the bare toes that peeked out from the bottom of the thing as she walked slowly to the center of the small stage.

  Once there, she stood stock-still for a moment, then whirled around two and a half times, ending with her back to the audience. Her hair hung halfway down her back, like black silk against the white silk of the robe. Then she thrust her arms straight out to the side, pulling the robe wide open. The red of the sunset and the red of the footlight torches danced on the silk now stretched out like butterfly wings.

  The audience gasped, men and women together. I may have, too. The woman hadn’t done anything yet, but she had that crowd spellbound. I suppose you can learn a lot of tricks in sixty-seven years.

  Slowly, she inched the open robe down her back, revealing brown shoulders worthy of a goddess. Then, when it was halfway down, she let it drop to the stage all at once, to reveal her in the same outfit in which she’d danced in town.

  It was a performance impossible to describe. For each person among the hundreds there, it was as though she had somehow divined our fantasies and formless longings, giving them, for the first time, physical form.