The Winter Quarters Correspondence

• Chapter 1 The Spring Route Sheet
• Chapter 2 The Lion Tamer's Ledger
• Chapter 3 The Calliope at Dawn
• Chapter 4 Testimony of the Flying Valantis
• Chapter 5 Incident at Blackwood Creek
• Chapter 6 Telegrams from the Advance Agent
• Chapter 7 The Aerialist’s Diary
• Chapter 8 Police Report: A Disturbance in the Big Top
• Chapter 9 The Sideshow Cipher
• Chapter 10 A Letter to the Ringmaster
• Chapter 11 Statement of the Fortune Teller
• Chapter 12 Missing Receipts and Vanishing Acts
• Chapter 13 The Midnight Menagerie
• Chapter 14 Interview with the Clown in Cell 4
• Chapter 15 Intercepted Postcard from Omaha
• Chapter 16 The Trapeze Rigging Investigation
• Chapter 17 The Fire at St. Jude’s Fairgrounds
• Chapter 18 Deposition of the Ticket Master
• Chapter 19 The Snake Charmer's Confession
• Chapter 20 Autopsy Report: The Strongman
• Chapter 21 Letters from the Sawdust Ring
• Chapter 22 The Coroner’s Inquest
• Chapter 23 Telegram: Cancel the Next Town
• Chapter 24 Evidence Box No. 7
• Chapter 25 The Final Bow at Winter Quarters
• Chapter 26 Closed Case File: The Season of 1923

Item 1-A: Archival Note, Office of the Special Investigator

State District Court Records, Third Judicial Circuit
Folder 1923-C (“Holloway & Sons Circus Assets & Liquidation”)
Transcribed for the Record: October 14, 1924

The following documents constitute the earliest surviving administrative records recovered from the red trunk found in the rear compartment of Baggage Car No. 108, impounded at the rail yard in Peru, Indiana. The printed route sheet was issued to all department heads, advance billers, and trainmasters during the final week of winter quarters in April 1923.

Annotations appearing in dark blue ink have been verified as the handwriting of Edgar Sterling, General Treasurer of the Holloway & Sons Great American Circus & Menagerie. Annotations in pencil are attributed to Arthur Holloway, proprietor and general manager. These materials provide the initial blueprint for the 1923 season, outlining the physical movement of sixty-four rail cars, three hundred and twelve employees, and eighty-six head of livestock prior to the operational collapse in autumn of that same year.

Item 1-B: Official Printed Route Sheet (Spring Route)

HOLLOWAY & SONS GREAT AMERICAN CIRCUS & MENAGNERIE
Forty-Second Annual Grand Tour — Season of 1923
Arthur Holloway, Sole Owner & General Director
General Offices: Peru, Indiana

NOTICE TO ALL DEPARTMENT HEADS:
This route is subject to immediate alteration by order of the General Manager or the Advance Bureau. Department heads must check in with the Trainmaster at 11:00 PM nightly for revised running orders. Mail for company members will be held at the local express office in each respective town until 4:00 PM on show day. Do not request advances from the Treasurer after 10:00 AM on Saturdays.

• May 3 (Thursday): Peru, Indiana (Winter Quarters Departure). Showgrounds: Circus Park. Rail Connection: Lake Erie & Western Railroad.
  (Sterling Note: Winter quarters bill paid in full. Feed merchant held back two bales of hay claiming rot; cleared for $14.50).

• May 4 (Friday): Kokomo, Indiana. Showgrounds: Old Ball Park Lot. Rail Connection: LE&W to Pennsylvania Lines.
  (Holloway Note in pencil: Local marshal demands three free box seats for his deputies. Give them Ring 3, row C. Keep the concessions away from the gate).

• May 5 (Saturday): Marion, Indiana. Showgrounds: County Fairgrounds. Rail Connection: Chesapeake & Ohio.
  (Sterling Note: Matinee sold out in advance to glass factory workers. Evening show light. Local ordinance forbids horn blowing after 10 PM).

• May 7 (Monday): Muncie, Indiana. Showgrounds: East Main Street Lot. Rail Connection: Union Traction Co. Siding.
  (Sterling Note: Sunday layover in Muncie. No tent setup allowed until midnight Sunday by order of the City Council. Stock to remain in cars or tethered at creek).

• May 8 (Tuesday): Anderson, Indiana. Showgrounds: White River Park. Rail Connection: Big Four Route.
  (Holloway Note: Vance reports rival show [Sells-Floto] billed two weeks ahead of us here. Paper pasted over our lithographs on Main Street. Sue or paste over theirs).

• May 9 (Wednesday): Indianapolis, Indiana. Showgrounds: West Washington Street Grounds. Rail Connection: Indianapolis Union Railway.
  (Sterling Note: Two-day stand canceled by order of General Manager on April 28. Substituted with Terre Haute route).

• May 9 (Wednesday - Revised): Crawfordsville, Indiana. Showgrounds: Mill Creek Lot. Rail Connection: Monon Route.
  (Holloway Note: Crawfordsville is a dry town. Ensure grease-joint operators do not sell cider with a kick. Police chief is sharp).

• May 10 (Thursday): Terre Haute, Indiana. Showgrounds: Wabash River Flats. Rail Connection: Vandalia Line.
  (Sterling Note: River lot is mud. We will need four extra teams of heavy horses from the livery to pull the heavy pole wagons out if it rains).

• May 11 (Friday): Vincennes, Indiana. Showgrounds: Fairgrounds. Rail Connection: Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern.

• May 12 (Saturday): Evansville, Indiana. Showgrounds: Howell Park Grounds. Rail Connection: Louisville & Nashville.
  (Sterling Note: Heavy coal smoke from the yard. Canvasmen complaining about grime on the main marquee. Wash down Sunday before moving into Illinois).

• May 14 (Monday): Carbondale, Illinois. Showgrounds: College Avenue Lot. Rail Connection: Illinois Central.

• May 15 (Tuesday): Murphysboro, Illinois. Showgrounds: Mining Association Field. Rail Connection: Mobile & Ohio.
  (Holloway Note: Add Blackwood Creek lot for May 17. Routing through the coal spur. Vance says the town doesn’t exist on the rail map, but the money is guaranteed).

• May 16 (Wednesday): Centralia, Illinois. Showgrounds: Northern Avenue Grounds. Rail Connection: Illinois Central.

• May 17 (Thursday): Blackwood Creek, Illinois. Showgrounds: Siding Lot No. 4. Rail Connection: Private Industrial Spur (Linton Coal & Timber Co.).
  (Sterling Note: Why are we taking a 60-car train down a timber spur? Roadbed is unballasted. Vance was instructed not to book private sidings without clearance from the Trainmaster. Advance deposit received in cash: $1,200. Paid by Mr. E. Ward. No promotional posters requested by local sponsor).

Item 1-C: Letter from Arthur Holloway to James Vance

On Holloway & Sons Letterhead (Peru, Indiana Office)
Dated: March 12, 1923

Mr. James Vance
Advance Agent, Car No. 1
c/o Hotel Central, Terre Haute, Indiana

Dear Jim,

I have received your route proposal for the first three weeks of May, and while the Indiana dates are sound enough, I must express my deep dissatisfaction with the sudden detours you have marked down for the southern part of the state and into Illinois.

We are dragging a heavy show this year, Jim. We have sixty-four cars, three rings, a five-ton calliope that shakes the coal cars apart every time we couple them, and eighty performers who expect to be fed three warm meals a day in the cookhouse. To pull a train of this weight off the main line of the Illinois Central and run it down single-track branch lines toward timber camps and coal sidings like Blackwood Creek is asking for a derailment. You know as well as I do what happens when a flatcar carrying the main center poles off-bottoms on an unballasted dirt bed—we spend twelve hours with jacks and block-and-tackle while the matinee crowd goes home with their ticket money back in their pockets.

You mention in your note that the deposit for the Blackwood Creek date was paid in advance by a Mr. Ward, representing the local extraction interests. Twelve hundred dollars in cash is a handsome guarantee for a Thursday in May, I do not deny that. In fact, given our current ledger situation with the harness maker in Peru and the butcher’s bill for the lion farm, it is a sum we cannot easily turn down. But I want to know why a coal company wants a sixty-car circus in a town that doesn't even show up in the Postal Guide. What sort of crowd are we playing to out there in the scrub oak?

Furthermore, I must ask you to cease making commitments regarding the placement of non-circus freight on our flatcars. Sterling tells me there was an inquiry from a gentleman in Indianapolis about renting space on Car 114—the long flat used for the cookhouse wagons—for two closed wooden crates to be picked up in Terre Haute and dropped off at the same private spur in Illinois. I run a circus, Jim, not a midnight wildcat express for the local wildcatters or moonshiners. We have enough trouble with the federal inspectors poking their noses through the animal cars looking for revenue stamps without hauling unmarked crates for strangers.

Get the permits in order for Kokomo and Muncie first. Make sure the billposters aren't plastering over church property or town hall boards; we paid forty dollars in fines in Ohio last September because your boys pasted a twenty-sheet lithograph of the elephant herd over the Mayor’s election notices.

Keep the route tight, stick to the heavy rail, and send your weekly expense account to Sterling. And go easy on the paste-bucket scotch.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Holloway
General Manager, Holloway & Sons Circus

Item 1-D: Field Letter from James Vance to Arthur Holloway

Written on Commercial Hotel Stationery (Muncie, Indiana)
Dated: March 18, 1923

Arthur Holloway, Esq.
Winter Quarters, Peru, Indiana

Dear Arthur,

I received your letter of the 12th at my stop in Muncie and I am taking a few minutes between the printer’s office and the local license bureau to set your mind at rest.

First, as to the route sheet: southern Indiana and the Illinois coal towns may look like small beer on paper, but the money in those towns is very real right now. The mines are working three shifts, the men haven't seen a parade since before the war, and they are starved for entertainment. The main-line towns like Indianapolis and Peoria are being over-billed by the big rail combines. Ringling is coming through Indiana in July, and Sells-Floto is already papering every barn from Richmond to Terre Haute. If we try to go toe-to-toe with them on the main line, we’ll be playing to empty seats while they paper the town with free passes. By taking the branch lines, we get the whole county to ourselves.

As for Blackwood Creek, you don't need to worry about the roadbed. I rode out to the siding myself on a rail-motor with the superintendent of the Linton Coal & Timber Company. It’s heavy six-inch steel, laid down two years ago to haul out hardwood timber and steam coal. It will carry our heavy flats without a murmur.

The gentleman who paid the deposit, Mr. Ward, is not a wildcatter. He represents the land company that owns the entire district out there. He explained to me that the company is trying to keep their workforce contented—they've had a lot of labor trouble down there the past two winters, union agitation and men drifting off to Chicago—and they want a full, three-ring spectacle to give the families something to talk about. Ward paid the license fee to the township himself, bought four hundred advance children's tickets to be distributed through the company store, and even agreed to supply twelve heavy draft teams and twenty tons of clean timothy hay at no charge to us. A sponsor like that doesn't come along twice a season, Arthur. If he wants us to pitch the Big Top on Siding Lot No. 4, we ought to thank him and play the date.

Regarding the crates you mentioned—I don't know what Sterling has been telling you, but nobody is using our train to smuggle bootleg whiskey or stolen goods. The agreement I made in Terre Haute was simply a courtesy extended to one of Ward’s associates who needed some heavy machinery gear moved down to the camp while the rail line was cleared for our circus special. It’s two wooden machinery cases, nothing more. They weigh less than a thousand pounds combined and fit easily behind the water wagon on Flat Car 114. We are getting two hundred dollars cash for the haul, which I have credited directly to the Advance Freight Account.

The billposters are behaving themselves. We had a slight misunderstanding in Kokomo with an apothecary who claimed our paper-hangers ruined his plate-glass window with starch, but five dollars and a pair of box seats for the Saturday night show smoothed his feathers down nicely.

We are ready for the opening in Peru on the 3rd. Make sure the calliope pipes are cleaned out—the steam valve was spitting rust all over the rear seats during the final run in November, and the ladies in the front row complained about the grease spots on their coats.

Regardfully yours,

James Vance
Advance Bureau, Car No. 1

Item 1-E: Memorandum from Edgar Sterling to Arthur Holloway

Internal Office Communication (Peru Winter Quarters)
Dated: April 2, 1923

Arthur,

I am writing this memo down so we have a record of it before the train rolls out of the yard next month. I have spent the last three days going over Vance’s route bookings, and I am not comfortable with the financial arrangements for the second week of May.

Attached below is the summary of advance deposits, license fees, and guaranteed minimums for the first fourteen dates. You will notice that while the early Indiana dates show normal advance ticket sales through the local drugstores and ticket agencies, the Illinois dates show almost no retail advance sales whatsoever. Instead, we have large lump-sum cash payments credited directly to "Private Sponsorship."

I spoke with the express agent at the Lake Erie & Western depot yesterday afternoon. He told me that the cash for the Blackwood Creek deposit didn't come through a bank draft or an express money order like normal commercial business. It was delivered to Vance in Terre Haute inside a plain canvas bank bag—all worn twenty-dollar bills, the old series, tied up with twine.

When I asked Vance for the receipt stub so I could log the tax record, he told me that Ward didn't require a receipt and didn't want his name appearing on our published route cards. He said Ward was acting on behalf of a syndicate that doesn't care for public print.

I don't like the look of it, Arthur. If this syndicate owns the land, the rail line, and the town, who are we going to appeal to if the gate receipts turn out to be short or if the train gets stuck on their spur? We are committing sixty cars and the whole canvas setup to a place where there isn't even a telegraph office listed in the Western Union directory. If something goes wrong down at Blackwood Creek, we won't even be able to wire the sheriff in Murphysboro without riding six miles on horseback.

Also, I checked the weight receipts for the canvas cars. Car 114 is already loaded five hundred pounds over its axle rating because of the new rigging timber we bought in February. If Vance is going to put two heavy wooden cases on that same flatcar in Terre Haute, Trainmaster Miller says he won't be responsible for hot boxes on the rear trucks.

Please instruct Vance that any additional freight loaded at Terre Haute must be weighed by the railroad weighmaster before it goes on our cars.

E. S.

Item 1-F: Field Telegrams Transcribed by Office Bureau

Recovered from File Envelope marked “Route Correspondence - April 1923”

TELEGRAM 1
From: James Vance, Advance Agent, Terre Haute, IN
To: Arthur Holloway, Holloway & Sons Circus, Peru, IN
Sent: April 14, 1923 (10:14 AM)

LICENSES CLEARED TERRE HAUTE AND VINCENNES STOP BLACKWOOD CREEK SPUR INSPECTED BY RAILWAY ROADMASTER YESTERDAY STOP ROADBED SAFE FOR SIXTY CARS AT FIFTEEN MILES PER HOUR STOP SPONSOR AGREES TO SUPPLY EXTRA LOCOMOTIVE TO PUSH SHOW TRAIN UP GRADE FROM RIVER JUNCTION STOP NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN STOP SEND MORE LITHOGRAPHS FOR KOKOMO BANNER CAR STOP
VANCE

TELEGRAM 2
From: Arthur Holloway, Peru, IN
To: James Vance, Hotel Central, Terre Haute, IN
Sent: April 14, 1923 (2:30 PM)

STERLING INSISTS ON WEIGHMASTER CERTIFICATE FOR CRATES LOADED TERRE HAUTE STOP DO NOT COUPLE EXTRA FREIGHT WITHOUT MILLER APPROVAL STOP TRAINMASTER HAS FINAL SAY ON CAR WEIGHT STOP ROUTE SHEET GOING TO PRINTER TONIGHT WITH BLACKWOOD CREEK INCLUDED BUT I WANT NO MORE CHANGES TO ILLINOIS SCHEDULE STOP
HOLLOWAY

TELEGRAM 3
From: James Vance, Terre Haute, IN
To: Arthur Holloway, Peru, IN
Sent: April 15, 1923 (8:05 AM)

CRATES WEIGHED AND CLEARED BY VANDALIA LINE AGENT STOP TOTAL EIGHT HUNDRED FORTY POUNDS STOP BILL OF LADING MARKED MINING MACHINERY PARTS STOP NO DELAY TO TRAIN STOP EVERYTHING IN ORDER FOR MAY THIRD OPENING STOP WEATHER CLEAR AND DRY STOP
VANCE

Item 1-G: Excerpt from the Desk Log of Trainmaster Thaddeus Miller

Bound Ledger Book, Leather Covers
Entry Date: April 28, 1923 (Peru Winter Quarters)

Final inspection of rolling stock completed today with Assistant Superintendent Vance and Mr. Holloway. Sixty-four cars on siding.

• Cars 101 to 104 (Sleeper Cars): Repainted blue with red lettering. Bunks inspected; three mattresses replaced in Car 103 (Performers’ Car) due to water damage from roof leak near stovepipe.
• Cars 105 to 110 (Stock Cars & Elephant Flats): Floor timbers in Car 107 replaced with green oak planks. Bull-hooks and tie-rings reset. Big Mary and the three smaller elephants tested on the loading ramps at 2:00 PM; loaded without trouble in fourteen minutes.
• Cars 111 to 120 (Flatcars for Wagons & Canvas): Couplers checked. Flatcar 114 shows minor sag in center sill; advised Holloway not to place the heavy steam calliope wagon on this deck. Calliope moved to Flatcar 112 behind the light ticket-office wagon. Flatcar 114 clear for cookhouse equipment and the two private machinery cases mentioned in Vance’s orders from Terre Haute.

Note made in log: A representative from the Linton Coal & Timber Company arrived at the yard at 4:00 PM today asking about the exact length of Flatcar 114. Name given as Mr. Thomas. He did not care to look at the animals or the Big Top canvas, but spent twenty minutes measuring the tie-down stakes on the deck of Car 114 with a folding steel tape. When I asked him what kind of mining gear needed six double-sheave tie-down straps, he said it was high-pressure valve gear that couldn't be allowed to shift an inch while the train was taking curves.

I told him our canvasmen have been tying down heavy circus wagons on flatcars for twenty years and don't need advice from a coal miner on how to throw a hitch. He gave me a five-dollar bill, told me to make sure the car was placed immediately behind the stock cars and not at the tail end of the train, and walked back toward the depot without another word.

I don't like outsiders messing around the flats before we even get the canvas out of the quartermaster's shop. I told the night watchman to keep the yard lamps lit around Car 114 until we pull out for the Peru showground on Wednesday morning.

T. Miller
Head Trainmaster, Holloway & Sons Circus

Item 1-H: Operational Notice Distributed to Circus Personnel

Mimeographed Circular Handed Out at Peru, Indiana
Dated: May 1, 1923

RULES FOR THE 1923 SEASON
By Order of Arthur Holloway, General Manager

1. Conduct: All employees must remember that the reputation of Holloway & Sons depends upon the good order of our personnel. No drinking, gambling, or loud quarreling will be tolerated on the streets of the towns we visit. Any employee found in a state of intoxication while on duty or during the grand parade will be discharged immediately without back pay.

2. Train Rules: The circus train is private property. No unauthorized persons—whether townspeople, local youths, or strangers—are permitted on the flatcars or inside the sleeper cars at any time. Department heads are responsible for the security of their own cars while the train is in transit or standing on sidings.

3. Mail & Telegraph: Personal mail will be delivered at the cookhouse during the noon meal. Telegraph messages of an urgent family nature must be brought to Mr. Sterling in the Red Wagon for transmission.

4. Private Freight: Attention is drawn to the fact that certain cars on the train carry administrative machinery and reserve supplies for company sponsors. Employees are strictly forbidden from tampering with, sitting upon, or opening any crates, canvas covers, or boxes marked with red paint or stenciled “L.C.T. CO. — PRIVATE SIDING DELIVERY.”

5. Parade Order: The morning parade will assemble at 10:15 AM sharp on show days, weather permitting. Mounts and draft teams must be groomed by 9:00 AM. The calliope will bring up the rear as usual.

Let us make the 1923 season the safest, cleanest, and most profitable tour in the forty-two-year history of the Holloway & Sons Great American Circus.

Item 1-I: Annotations on the Margin of the Route Sheet

Scrawled in red pencil by an unidentified hand on the back of the printed Route Sheet found in Box 7

May 3 - Peru: Good dirt. Big crowd.
May 4 - Kokomo: Rain at noon. Canvas heavy.
May 5 - Marion: Mud on the lot. Two horses down.
May 8 - Anderson: Vance is nervous. Keeps watching the rear cars.
May 10 - Terre Haute: The two boxes were loaded at 2 AM on the river siding. Not at the main depot. Takes six men to shift one box. They don't sound like machinery when the train moves over the frog switches. They sound like iron plates sliding in grease.
May 12 - Evansville: We are turning south now toward the coal spur. The wind coming off the river smells like coal smoke and wet canvas. God help the show if it rains when we get down to Blackwood Creek.

Item 2-A: Archival Summary, State District Court Records

Folder 1923-C (“Holloway & Sons Circus Assets & Liquidation”)
Transcribed for the Record: October 16, 1924

The items gathered in this section were recovered from a locked iron-bound ledger box found beneath the bunk in Stateroom 4, Sleeper Car No. 102. The room was occupied during the 1923 season by Captain Jean-Pierre Laurent (born Harvey James Potts in Decatur, Illinois), head wild animal presenter for the Holloway & Sons Circus.

The ledger consists of a commercial canvas-bound accounting book containing handwritten daily entries regarding feed consumption, stock health, trainer expenses, and personal reflections on the behavior of the big cats. Tucked between the pages were several items of correspondence, including letters from the meat supplier, internal memoranda from management, and a series of receipts detailing private payments made to Laurent during May 1923.

Item 2-B: Pages from the Animal Ledger of Captain Jean-Pierre Laurent

Selected Entries: April 25 – May 18, 1923

April 25 (Peru Winter Quarters)
Feed delivery arrived late from Miller’s Butchery. Six hundred pounds of horse meat, fair quality, though the ribs are thin. The old lioness, Cleo, refused her feed today. Her lower right molar is bad again. I told Miller we need fresh beef liver for her if we want her to stick the spring parade. Nero and Brutus fought in the shifting cage over a joint bone; Nero took a gouge out of Brutus’s left shoulder. Not deep, but it will need pine tar to keep the flies off when we open in Peru next week. The two new leopards, Prince and Sultan, are still jumpy from the rail trip from New Jersey. They won't take meat off the iron rod yet; I have to drop it through the top hatch and clear out so they can eat in the dark.

May 3 (Peru, Indiana — Opening Day)
Good crowd for the matinee. Ring 2 went smooth. Nero took his pedestal without the whip today, though he roared long enough when the calliope struck up during the grand entrance. Cleo stayed in the chute; tooth too sore for her to work. Holloway was on my back after the show, saying I can't leave a four-hundred-pound lion in the chute while the crowd is paying fifty cents a head to see six cats on the pedestals. I told him if he wants to go into the steel cage and put a rope on a lioness with a rotten jaw, he is welcome to try. Money from Treasurer Sterling: $35.00 for meat, $12.00 personal draw.

May 6 (Layover near Muncie, Indiana)
Raining since midnight. The menageries are stuck in the mud down by the creek. The cats hate the damp; Nero has been pacing the length of Shifting Car 106 for six hours straight, rubbing his flanks raw against the iron bars until I hung burlap sacks over the sides to shut out the lantern light. The meat we bought in Marion is turning grey. I had to wash it down with weak vinegar water before tossing it to the cats. If Sterling doesn't give me enough cash to buy clean beef in Indianapolis, we’re going to have sick animals before we hit Illinois.

May 11 (Vincennes, Illinois)
Something is wrong with the air in these rail towns. The cats know it before we do. When we coupled the stock cars to the night freight out of Terre Haute, Nero stood up on his hind legs and caught his claws in the upper roof vent, sniffing toward the rear of the train. He wasn't smelling feed or blood; he had his ruff blown out like he does when a stray dog gets into the arena, but worse. Deep, guttural purring in the back of his throat that kept the rest of the den awake all night. The two wooden boxes Vance put on Flatcar 114 are parked right behind our car. Whatever is inside those cases, it isn't mining equipment. I've spent twenty years around animals, wild and tame, and I know the smell of a live coat through grease-cloth. It smells like iron filings and stale river water.

May 14 (Carbondale, Illinois)
Cleo died in her chute at 4:00 AM. No mark on her, but her tongue was swollen black and her eyes were rolled back into her head. Sterling claims it was her bad tooth, but I examined her throat before we hauled the car down to the rendering works. Her windpipe was dry as paper. I asked Miller if the train had laid over near any chemical works or coal washers during the night; he said we were held on the sidings near the Linton junction for three hours waiting for the coal spur to clear. Nero hasn't eaten his beef since we crossed the state line. He sits in the corner of his cage, turning his head away from the light, watching the floorboards.

May 17 (Blackwood Creek, Illinois — Siding Lot No. 4)
We pitched the tents in a clearing surrounded by scrub oak and slate heaps. No town to speak of—just a coal tipple, a company store, and rows of black wooden shacks stretching down to the creek. The air tastes like sulfur and coal dust. The matinee was sparse, but the evening crowd was strange—men in heavy flannel shirts and muddy boots who sat on the blue boards without making a sound. No clapping, no cheering, no children screaming at the clowns. They just watched.

When I brought the five cats into the Big Top for the 8:00 PM display, Nero refused to leap through the hoop. He crouched under the pedestal, his ears flat against his skull, staring down at the sawdust in the center of Ring 2. I used the whip, then the iron bar, but he wouldn't budge. He made a sound I've never heard from an African lion—not a roar, but a high, whistle-like whine, like steam leaking through a rusty valve. I had to call the chutes open and run the cats back to the stock car before the act was half over. Holloway was furious. He threatened to dock my pay fifty dollars for ruining the climax of the show. I told him he can fire me if he likes, but I'm not going back into that ring with cats that are smelling something under the sawdust that I can't see.

Item 2-C: Memorandum from Edgar Sterling to Captain Laurent

Written on Holloway & Sons Official Accounting Paper
Dated: May 9, 1923

Captain Laurent,

In reply to your requisition for seventy-five dollars ($75.00) for the purchase of fresh beef quarters from the packer in Terre Haute:

Mr. Holloway has reviewed your request and instructs me to inform you that the animal department has already exceeded its budget for the month of May by nearly sixty dollars, owing largely to the feed bills incurred during the layover in Muncie.

We cannot authorize the purchase of prime beef at current prices. You are instructed to make use of the horse meat contracted through the Linton Coal & Timber Company’s local agricultural depot in Illinois. They have agreed to supply six hundred pounds of dressed horse beef per week at a rate forty percent below current market prices in Indiana.

Regarding your complaints about the air quality in Stock Car 106 and its proximity to FlatCar 114:

Trainmaster Miller has made it clear that the arrangement of flatcars cannot be changed at this stage of the tour. Flatcar 114 is positioned where it is by order of the railroad inspectors to balance the brake weight of the rear sleeper section. The two wooden machinery crates belong to our private sponsor and are securely lashed down. They contain sealed industrial parts that do not produce vapor or fumes of any kind.

If your lions are restless, I suggest you increase their exercise time in the shifting cage during morning setup, or make use of the bromides supplied by the veterinary surgeon in Peru. We cannot rearrange a sixty-car train to accommodate the nerves of five lions.

Respectfully,

Edgar Sterling
Treasurer, Holloway & Sons Circus

Item 2-D: Letter from Jean-Pierre Laurent to Mrs. Clara Potts (Decatur, Illinois)

Unsent letter found inside the ledger
Dated: May 16, 1923 (Written from Murphysboro, Illinois)

My Dear Clara,

I am writing this from the sleeper car while we wait for the yard engine to hook us up for the run down to this place called Blackwood Creek. I wish to God we had never taken the show off the main line.

This tour has gone bad, Clara. Not like the bad seasons we had in '17 with the rain and the flu, but bad in a way that makes my skin crawl every time I step off the train. Holloway has sold the show out to a bunch of coal speculators who don't care about circus acts. We aren't playing to farmers and schoolboys anymore; we're hauling this train down logging spurs that look like they haven't seen a passenger car in twenty years, stopping at private coal sidings where there isn't a poster on the fence or a ticket window in sight.

The cats know it, too. Cleo died three days ago—just stopped breathing in her box overnight. And Nero, who has been my lead cat for nine years, has gone completely sour. He won't take his meat, he won't look at the whip, and he spends his nights pressed up against the rear iron door of his cage, sniffing at the crack in the door.

There are two large wooden boxes on the flatcar behind us. They put them on at Terre Haute in the middle of the night, using a steam crane that belonged to the railroad company. Vance claimed they were mining gears, but I was standing on the platform when they set the second box down on the deck timbers. Clara, the flatcar dropped six inches on its springs when that box hit the wood. Steel gears don't shift when a train rounds a bend, but whatever is in those boxes shifts. I've heard it late at night when the train slows down for the grade crossings—a slow, heavy sliding sound, like a sack of wet salt shifting against the pine boards.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a man in a black oilskin coat standing by Flatcar 114 while the canvasmen were pitching the cookhouse tent. He wasn't one of our road crew, and he wasn't a railroad man. He had a brass canister strapped to his hip with a rubber tube running into his coat pocket, and he was using a long iron rod to tap the side of the wooden crate, listening to the wood like a doctor with a stethoscope. When I walked toward him to ask what he was doing on our car, he looked up at me with eyes as pale as creek ice, turned around without a word, and walked off into the woods behind the siding.

I have eighty dollars saved in my trunk. If things aren't better by the time we hit Centralia next week, I am going to pack my bag, hand my whips to Holloway, and catch the passenger train home to Decatur. There is something on this train that shouldn't be on it, Clara, and I don't want to be in the steel cage when it comes out.

Your loving husband,

Harvey

Item 2-E: Receipts and Financial Inclosures

Found loose between pages 44 and 45 of the Ledger

RECEIPT 1
Handwritten on scrap paper
Dated: May 10, 1923 (Terre Haute, IN)

Received from Mr. E. Ward the sum of Twenty-Five Dollars ($25.00) in cash, for services rendered in connection with extra watch duty on Flatcar 114 during night transit between Terre Haute and Vincennes.
Signed: H. J. Potts (Capt. Laurent)

RECEIPT 2
Handwritten on scrap paper
Dated: May 15, 1923 (Murphysboro, IL)

Received from Mr. E. Ward the sum of Fifty Dollars ($50.00) in cash, as final payment for keeping animal quarters closed to the public between the hours of 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM during layover at Blackwood Creek Spur.
Signed: H. J. Potts (Capt. Laurent)

Item 2-F: Statement of Assistant Animal Keeper Thomas B. Claggett

Taken by Deputy Sheriff C. M. Vance at Murphysboro, Illinois
Transcribed: June 2, 1923

My name is Thomas Claggett. I’ve been employed by Holloway & Sons for three seasons as an assistant animal keeper, working directly under Captain Laurent. My job is to clean the chutes, haul the meat buckets, and help load the shifting cages onto the flats when we tear down at night.

I remember the night of May 17 very well—that was the night we played the Blackwood Creek siding lot. Captain Laurent had a row with Mr. Holloway right after the evening show because the lion act had gone wrong. The Captain was red in the face and told Mr. Holloway that he wasn't going to put the cats into Ring 2 again as long as those wooden crates were kept on Flatcar 114. Mr. Holloway told him to go to his stateroom and drink some cold water and stop acting like a chorus girl.

Around 11:30 PM, after the Big Top had been struck and the canvas was loaded onto the wagons, I went back to Stock Car 106 to give the leopards their water buckets before we coupled up. The Captain was already there, sitting on a feed crate near the cage doors with his lantern on the floor. He had his ledger open on his knee, writing in it with a pencil.

While I was filling the water buckets from the barrel, three men came down the side of the track from the direction of the engine. One of them was Mr. Ward—the man who bought all those tickets for the coal company—and the other two were dressed in dark clothes with capes pulled down around their shoulders, like doctors or undertakers. They didn't have lanterns; they were carrying small electric torches that gave off a blue light.

Mr. Ward came up to the sliding door of Car 106 and spoke to Captain Laurent. He didn't speak loud, but the car was quiet except for the leopards panting, so I heard every word.

He said, "Is the long cat quiet tonight, Captain?"

Captain Laurent didn't look up from his ledger. He said, "Nero is sick. He’s been sick since Terre Haute. I told Holloway he needs to be turned out in a green paddock or he’s going to die like the lioness."

Mr. Ward stepped up into the doorway. He reached into his coat and took out a heavy brown envelope and laid it down on the ledger across the Captain’s lap.

He said, "There is two hundred dollars in that envelope, Potts. We are going to uncouple Car 114 at the timber bridge two miles down the spur tonight. We need you to keep your keepers away from the flatcar platforms until four in the morning. If you hear anything moving on the timber deck, you stay inside Car 102 and keep your mouth shut."

Captain Laurent looked at the envelope for a long time. Then he picked it up, shoved it into his trousers pocket, and closed his ledger. He stood up, grabbed his coat off the peg, and looked at me.

He said, "Tom, go back to the sleeper car and stay there till daylight. Don't go near the water wagon, and don't look out the platform windows when we cross the creek."

I asked him what was going on, but he pulled his hat down and walked off toward the engine without answering me. That was the last time I saw him alive. They found him the next morning lying on the gravel embankment down by Blackwood Creek bridge, about forty yards below the timber trestle. His neck was broken. The police in Murphysboro said he must have slipped off the platform between the cars while the train was taking the curve at the creek, but I saw his lantern sitting on the deck of Flatcar 114 three days later when the train was impounded in Peru. The glass wasn't broken, and the oil was still in the bowl.

Item 2-G: Marginal Notes in the Back of the Laurent Ledger

Written in pencil in a frantic, uncharacteristic hand on the final flyleaf of the book

12:10 AM - They have uncoupled Car 114 on the bridge.
The train is standing still on the timber trestle.
No steam from the engine. Everything quiet except the creek water below.
They are taking the pine boards off the second box.
I can hear the crowbars pulling the nails—three long screeches of wood.
The cats are going wild in 106. Brutus is beating his head against the iron bars.
It isn't an animal.
God above, it isn't an animal at all.
It has no skin.
They are pouring something into the creek out of iron cans.
I can smell it from here—like old lard and wet tin.
Ward is standing on the bridge timbers with a long pole, directing them.
They are lowering it down into the dark under the trestle.
It doesn't drop.
It climbs down.
I am going out on the platform to get my coat.
If Vance comes back from the caboose, tell him—

(The entry terminates abruptly at this point. A dark smudge, consistent with coal grease or wet soot, covers the lower third of the page).