Lloyd was infinitely relieved, but as he walked back toward the town he overtook a man whom he remembered instantly to have earlier noticed—he had been laughing like a satyr at the spectacle of the dancing oread in the show that afternoon. There was something so malicious, so triumphant in the character of his mirth that Lloyd's keen observation might have discriminated its peculiar relish of the girl's failure to win the public favour, even if he had not had the success of the "turn" so much at heart. With his retentive mind he would have remembered the demonstration in any event, but as he passed the man whose face was also turned toward the village he received an unpleasant impression that he had been followed. If this man had gone by the Pinnott encampment along the road, as several others had done, Lloyd argued within himself that he would likewise have noticed the fact; the man had obviously left the town last, and it was certainly somewhat odd that within so short an interval of time he should be overtaken wending his way thither. He was not of the type or station to indulge in a stroll for pleasure or a constitutional tramp. He seemed, moreover, infirm, walking very slowly and he leaned heavily on a stout cane. Lloyd noticed as he passed that the high cowhide boots which he wore had been split by a knife with longitudinal strokes above the toes of each foot, suggesting the torture of bunions. The gray coat loose and long was not of the usual homespun jeans, but of some store-bought fabric, and from the web the nap had so worn that the original texture was indeterminable. The garment boasted few buttons; the substitute of a ten-penny nail was dexterously inserted in the upper buttonhole and an opportune rent in the opposite side. It was frayed and even jagged around the edges, and the trousers of the same goods, loose and bagging about the knees, were in scarcely better repair. His shoulders were bent and slouched, and the coat was either too large at first or had stretched with wear into many rucks and wrinkles. It had suggestions of a miller's habit, for here and there were traces of flour, and the old white wool hat had neither binding on its wide brim nor a hatband.
Lloyd sought to cast off the disagreeable impression. He had naught to hide. He could be followed, if indeed his steps had been dogged at all, only from the idlest curiosity. The rural people seemed in fact so elementary, so primitive, that the showman, himself, might be accounted an object of interest. And even as he thus reasoned he perceived the fallacy, but he had scant leisure to canvass the incident.
CHAPTER VII
Lloyd could not remember an evening in his humble career as impresario that had so strained and racked his endurance. The pyrotechnic exhibition bade fair to be a failure, some of the combustibles having gotten damp in the downpour of rain on the previous evening, and each piece refusing to fizzle or shoot or whirl, whatever its particular method of explosion might be, while all the town gathered and stared, and laughed, and grew indignant, and made sarcastic comments somewhat incompatible with the fact that the fireworks were a free show, and that no spectator was defrauded of his money. Suddenly, after so much futile effort, and without any of the usual incentives, a small waggon which had brought the explosives from the station to the square, was lifted toward the stars in jets of red, blue, yellow, green and white light; rockets were darting, comet-like, hither and thither through the crowd; Catherine wheels whirled; Roman candles blazed; cannon crackers exploded; all in simultaneous clamour and flare. The terrified horse, breaking loose from his harness, set off at a frantic speed, and the driver was thrown to the earth, not dead nor wounded as the men, rushing to his assistance, expected to find him, but powder-smirched, slightly jarred, convulsed with laughter, declaring that his ascension discounted the Flying Lady's jaunts into the air, and showing himself to be very considerably drunk—a state which had not been at all obvious before the explosion.
The crowd's interest in combustibles had very sensibly diminished and when the final balloons had gone wafting away over the dark stretches of the infinite loneliness of the Great Smoky Mountains—to astonish the eyes of some remote dweller therein, knowing naught even of the existence of so sophisticated a fact as a street fair, or perchance to be seen only by a marauding wolf or a crafty fox and seeming to follow with the red eye of menace the beast's pursuit of his prey,—the craning necks of the villagers were tired and the sight-seers turned with ready zest to the merry-go-round, the kinetoscope, the vendors of indigestible edibles, the various show-tents, the revolutions of the Ferris Wheel. The continual ascent and descent of the passengers, swinging in the great periphery, maintained a perennial interest for the public of Colbury. As the wheel lifted its patrons higher and higher into the air it paused entirely now and then, that they might swing gently at a giddy elevation and look away from the town, studded with the lights of the street fair, flaring in the clear, dark atmosphere, and enjoy the far prospect of valley and river and the clifty defiles of the mountains, all an illumined purple and silver in the sheen of the serene autumnal moon.
But even in this simple routine, quiet shunned the harassed manager. The wheel was laden, as Lloyd in his general supervisory duties, strolled up and with his hands in his pockets stood watching its revolution. Every seat but one was filled, and the exclamations of delight and wonder in the voices of children and women sounded pleasantly enough on the air. Suddenly raucous tones from high in the darkness broke forth; a man was thickly protesting fear and anger and contention, and soon his voice rose into sobs and wild cries, infinitely weird and nerve thrilling, sounding from the height and the indefinite gloom, and fraught with unimagined disaster. Amongst the venturesome wights, swinging so high above the earth, the utmost consternation prevailed, and pleas of eager insistence to be lowered and released came from every swing. A halloo of inquiry from the manager below addressed to the disturber of the peace elicited only agonised prayers for succour and cries of pain that rose piercingly into the night. The mystery being insoluble Lloyd's first care was to caution the other occupants of the swings to remain firmly seated in their places and to release them seriatim as soon as the great wheel could complete its revolution. While this was in progress he stood close by, scanning the passengers as one by one they emerged, keenly watching lest the spoil-sport, madman, or victim, who had so signally destroyed the pleasure of the crowd and injured the prestige of the Ferris Wheel, escape undetected in the press. He proved easily enough identified, however, as, still whimpering in the intervals of uttering wild cries, he came to the ground and was seized upon by the stalwart showman.
He had been stabbed, he declared, and he would sue the company. When reminded that he had been in a seat alone, and inquired of as to the perpetrator of the deed he asseverated that when as high as the top of the wheel a stranger had climbed into the seat with him, a stranger of a most terrible aspect. In fact, this terrible stranger looked just like the devil, he solemnly averred, with evident familiarity with the diabolic features. And there, while suspended so high above the world that none could succour him, this demon-man had stabbed him—and he would have damages of the show company—stabbed him in the right side.
With the most dismal forebodings, for the man was evidently half fainting and had the pallor of death, Lloyd called the engineer from the little gasoline motor of the wheel to his assistance, and supporting the victim between them they took their way to the drug store on the corner. Lloyd noticed the feeble step of their burden, as his feet half dragged on the ground, and the nerveless languor of his form, and began to fear that he was indeed in bad case. The truth did not even vaguely dawn upon Lloyd until the physician, who had been hastily summoned, looked the victim over and declared that his skin was unbroken throughout and he had never been stabbed.
"Why, what could have been his motive in all this commotion?" asked Lloyd in wonderment.
"Can't you see?" the doctor queried in turn. "He is on the verge of delirium tremens."