“Fangs of Vengeance” (Weird Tales, April 1937)

Bloch, Robert [Nathan Hindin]. “Fangs of Vengeance.” Weird Tales, April 1937, pp. 470-481.
​ https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV28N04193611/page/n65/mode/2up 

The story is set during the winter quarters of a circus. During the seasonal break, managers of circuses find new acts for the coming season, and fine-tune the offering so that once the season begins, the show will be running smoothly. Animal trainers have gone somewhat out of fashion, and so the Stellar Brothers Circus was happy to land Captain Zaroff, a big cat trainer, as a featured act. General Zaroff had uncanny mastery over the leopards in his charge. He controlled them without the aid of a chair or a gun. They seemed to fear him and his whip desperately. The narrator, one of the managers of the circus, began to grow suspicious. Strange things began to happen. A troupe of African show people arrived and immediately quit the show once they learned of General Zaroff’s methods. 

Their translator told the narrator that the Africans thought he was a witch doctor, that he was using nefarious methods to control the cats. The narrator met Zaroff’s wife who told him that Zaroff was diabolical and they he should be exposed for the evil fraud that he is. Zaroff used physical violence to silence her, and the narrator was profoundly disturbed. Soon, Zaroff reported that his wife has left his and that he had a new cat in the show, a black panther. At the next rehearsal, the leopards and the panther attacked Zaroff. His assistants did all they could by emptying their guns into the cage, but by the time the smoke cleared., Zaroff was dead, as were the eight African men who had been transformed into leopards and the one woman—Zaroff’s wife—who had been transformed into the black panther.

This is the first of Bloch’s many circus stories. It takes place in a disquieting location: all of the pomp and dazzle of a showplace with none of the audience. The scene where Zaroff exhibits his act in an empty tent save for the circus owner and the narrator, is foreboding: “There are no bands playing in the winter quarters, no happy, cheering crowds. No clowns perform their antic drolleries to ease the tension with a laugh. Working with newly broken jungle beasts is by no means the same safe routine as a developed act. The real danger does not strike after the spectacular routine is perfected — it comes before, during the long, slow hours of winter training. It was with this thought in our minds that we waited in that silent, empty barn; waited, and worried” (471-472). Continuing the theme of “Mother of Serpents,” Africa and Africans are, unfortunately, treated as savage and exotic. The story rests on the ability of a white man to penetrate the “savage” lands to learn the secret magic available only outside of “civilization”: “As the shadows about us deepened, his voice became lower and more confidential. He was speaking of the blacks now — the furtive, sinister blacks of Sierra Leone, who practiced voodoo and obeah rites in the hidden swamps. He told me of the witch doctors who invoked the Crocodile God to the beat of jungle drums; spoke of the snake-gods of secret, inner Africa. And he whispered of the Leopard-men” (479). This is also the first story that Bloch published under a pseudonym, which was necessary because his other story, “The Mannikin,” appeared in the same issue of Weird Tales.