Search Us Circus
3 Ring Boulevard
Barnum, PU 54321
October 22, 1999
Calculus Students
Franklin & Marshall College
Lancaster, PA 17604-3003
Dear Calculus Students:
The most horrible thing has happened! I don't quite know how to tell you . . . this is going to be a horrible shock, so please prepare yourself. What a terrible thing to have to write in a letter!
Snavely Bravely is in critical condition in the hospital. Doctors tell me that they think he has a decent chance of pulling through all right, but his condition was touch-and-go for a long time. We're all crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. But of course he lost a lot of blood when the rhinoceros gored him, so he looks a lot like a fish that's been on the pier for an hour too long. I am just sick with worry.
It seems that bad news never comes alone. The second piece of ill-tidings I have for you is that Dick Dastardly is in jail, and the police seem to be running all over looking for evidence. Dastardly says that any evidence against him is circumstantial, and that at most he's guilty of an unintentional accident. I, on the other hand, am getting fed up with Dastardly's accidents, and I want you to help me put that creep away.
How do you kill somebody with a rhinoceros? I don't know exactly, but somehow Dastardly managed to do it--nearly. I guess I should back up and start at the beginning so you can understand what I'm talking about . . . the last few days have been so bizarre that I know I must be babbling.
Last Saturday, we put on an extravaganza show. Snavely Bravely was a big help in getting everything ready: he polished up Electra's titanium wire; he stirred the jello for Lead Head McCann; and he polished up the rails on his Rhinoceros Track. As you well know, Bravely is the only human being ever to stop a rhinoceros charge with his bare hands. He did this some years ago on a safari he was leading. Although we try not to let this get about too much, the fact is that the rhino was old and sick and in fact died mid-charge in front of Snavely. Well, our hero Snavely knew a good thing when he saw it, and he had that rhino stuffed and mounted. He brought it back to the US and now we use this stuffed rhino in Majestica's Search Us Circus! We've placed the rhino on a flat-bed tram, and this tram glides along a set of rails that lead from behind a curtain out into the middle of the ring. The tram is hooked up to a huge spring, so before the show we push the rhino backwards about 20 feet and secure the tram with a latch. This takes a lot of strong people pushing, let me tell you! That rhino, even stuffed, weighs a half a ton!
During Bravely's show, Electra releases the latch and the rhino, spring propelled, bursts forth from behind a curtain and screeches to a stop just in front of Snavely Bravely, and then backs up behind the curtain again, and then comes forward to peek out, and goes back, and forward just barely, and then stops. You can imagine the thrill of the crowd to see this huge rhinoceros charge at Bravely, and then retreat in fear, only to end up peering timidly through the curtain at our ferocious wild animal tamer. Grown men faint, and women scream. Small children have nightmares for a week.
This, alas, is how it usually works, but the stunt didn't work this way on Saturday. On Saturday, the rhino charged right into Snavely and kept going, and then dragged Snavely backwards on its horn. Now, Snavely practiced this show in rehearsal: I saw him. I already mentioned that he'd re-greased the tracks, and then we pushed the rhino backwards (it's so heavy!), stood well back, released the latch, and marked an "X" on the floor just beyond where the rhino turned back. We did this twice, just to make sure; and then during the show Snavely stood right on this "X" during the show. So the rhino must have gone further than it did in practice.
Well, I'm mad--really mad. This is the third time Snavely's been to the hospital in as many months, and I'm not ready to believe in that kind of coincidence. I started snooping. The first thing I found was dust marks on the tram under the rhino: round dust marks with "300" written on them backwards. Somehow, Dastardly's weights had been on the tram recently! I don't know if they were on the tram during practice or during the show, but I know they were there. I confronted Dastardly about these weights. At first he said that he had no idea what I was talking about, but a police officer overheard me and showed him the dust marks, and then he acted as though he'd forgotten; that they'd been there two days before, but said that he removed them Friday.
But the police officer was suspicious, and kept asking questions. Like most circus strong men, Dastardly was a physics major in college, and he tried to explain to the police officer and to me that even if the weights had been there, it would make no difference, because the attitude of a spring only depends on its the initial ferocity and display-ment. (I think that's what he said). The officer took him downtown for questioning, while I kept looking around. And I found something! I feel like a detective! Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means: it's a scrap of paper in Dastardly's handwriting, with physics on it. (Actually, at first I thought that he was writing about trouble in the Catholic church, but Electra says she doesn't thinks "friction" and "mass" mean what I think they do.) And unfortunately, it's not complete.
I gave the paper to the police, but I made a copy first; it's here. Is this a clue? Can you tell me if Dastardly was really involved?
Yours most sincerely,
Matilda
Matilda Majestica
Owner, Majestica's Search Us
Circus
